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REViS::.^ EDITION WITH HELPS TO STUDY 



DEMOCRACY TODAY 



AN AMERICAN INTERPRETATION 



EDITED FOR SCHOOL USE 
BY 

CHRISTIAN GAUSS 

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 



SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY 
CHICAGO NEW YORK 

Jfc^^ ___ 






Copyright 1917, 1019 cy 

SCOTT^ rOKESIviA^' AND CUxvlPANY 



JON 16 1019 

(S)CI,A529043 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction 7 

Lincoln — Gettysburg Address , 17 

Lowell— Democracy 19 

Cleveland — The Message of Washington 49 

Roosevelt — Our Responsibilities as a Nation 59 

Wilson — The Meaning of the Declaration of Independ- 
ence 63 

Wilson — The American of Foreign Birth 75 

Wilson — America First 81 

Wilson — The School of Citizenship 90 

Wilson — Abraham Lincoln 96 

Wilson — A World League for Peace 102 

Wilson — Message to Congress 113 

Wilson — Request for a. Grant of Power 119 

Wilson — War Message 126 

Wilson — Flag Day Address 1-±1 

Wilson — Reply to the Pope ; 151 

Lane — Why We Are at War 156 

Root — The Duties of the Citizen 163 

Wilson — What Democracy Means 182 

Wilson — Second War Message 194 

Wilson — Program of the World 's Peace 200 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Wilson — Address to Congress 219 

Wilson — The End of Selfish Dominion 229 

Wilson — The Mount Vernon Address 235 

Wilson — Peace with Justice 240 

Wilson — Attitude of the United States Toward Mexico 250 
Wilson — The End of the War 257 

Appendix 

Lloyd George — The Meaning" of America 's Entrance 

into the War 1 

The Constitution of the United States 9 

Biographical and Explanatory Notes 29 

Lloyd George — Britain's War Aims Newly Defined. . . 107 

Index 117 

Supplementary Material 

Helps to Study 124 

Theme Subjects 135 

Selections for Class Beading 137 



INTRODUCTION 

It is the purpose of this volume to provide certain 
important documents of abiding value which will help 
students in secondary schools and colleges to under- 
stand the situation in which the country finds itself 
today, and which will serve also to clarify their 
ideas on the purposes and significance of America. 

The consciousness of any fixed, national purpose 
has never been strong in the minds and hearts of 
Americans. Our first impulse is angrily and emphati- 
cally to deny this, for we have never admitted that 
we were lacking in anything, even in ideals. What 
other nations possessed which was good, we too wished 
to have, — and on a ^'bigger" scale. Yet this defi- 
ciency in our national psychology has forcibly 
impressed foreigners. To them we are only too often 
a people of adventurers with no set goal, at best 
active and intrepid, making and breaking our own 
ideals. We impressed the stranger as Hannibal 
impressed the Roman historian. To us there is nihil 
sancti, nothing sacred : So Kipling found us ; 
We shake the iron hand of fate 
And match with destiny for beers. 

Such an attitude as is attributed to us would pretty 
surely tend to make us overlook or minimize one main 
question that we, like all nations, must face. Of this 
question H. G. Wells in The Future of America 
writes: *'The problem in America, save in its scale 



8 Democracy Today 

and freedom, is no different from the problem of Great 
Britain, of Europe, of all humanity ; it is one chiefly 
moral and intellectual; it is to resolve a confusion 
of purposes, traditions, habits, into a common, ordered 
intention. ' ' 

That this problem should have received so little 
attention in America at large is due not to any 
absence of great leaders, or to any failure on the 
part of our leaders beginning with Washington to 
set before us such an ''ordered intention." It has 
been due to the fact that we have been feverishly 
engaged in other problems; the exploitation of our 
natural resources, the development of industry, and 
the attempt to assimilate a vast immigrant popula- 
tion. It was due also to the further fact that living 
in a continent with no powerful or aggressive neigh- 
bors, we felt wrongly that we could, for the present 
at least, pursue a policy of isolation unmolested. We 
have lived in a provincialism of soul of which we 
were not conscious and which it has taken a world- 
catastrophe to shatter. 

Yet around one fundamental ideal we have all and 
always rallied. No matter from what part of the 
earth we or our forefathers came, America is a 
democracy. Democracy and republicanism are 
often used interchangeably, though the latter refers 
rather to the form of government and the former 
to its spirit. That we are a republic is one of the 
fortunate accidents of history, for the men of *76 
did not go to war for the purpose of electing a 
president of their own, but because they refused to 



Introduction 9 

be governed by a body in which they were not repre- 
sented. If then, the War of Independence was not 
waged primarily' for the purpose of founding a repub- 
lic, it was waged in the interest of democracy, in the 
interest of founding a government which on the one 
hand should be responsible to the people and for 
which on the other, the people should be responsible, 

Any particular state is merely the expression of an 
ideal of society and when the Eevolution had ended 
and the time had come to shape a constitution, it was 
natural that our forefathers should have chosen a 
republican form of government, in which not only are 
the policies to be pursued formulated by the citizens 
through their representatives, but the executives of 
these policies are also named by them. 

In modern times and on so large a scale, the experi- 
ment was new and we have the distinction of having 
been the first of the great modern republics. The 
experiment, and such it was, was viewed abroad with 
interest and suspicion. During our early trials, and 
they were many and serious, few on the other side of 
the Atlantic believed that the new and struggling gov- 
ernment could endure. For not only w^as our state a 
new departure, but the way of life of the colonists 
also; and the structure of their society differed in 
many respects from that of the great European pow- 
ers. We had, to be sure, inherited the liberal tradi- 
tions of the English law and the English constitution, 
but the great European states still maintained the 
social order known as feudal, developed in the Mid- 
dle Ages and based upon the existence and official 



10 Democracy Today 

recognition of privileged classes. Of such a class and 
such a feudal tradition we knew nothing, and the 
ignorance was a fortunate one. 

If the little republic embarked upon an uncharted 
sea, it did so under the most favorable conditions 
ever vouchsafed to man. A people of pioneers, 
unhampered by constraining traditions, we were 
threatened by no fear of invasion by powerful and 
aggressive neighbors and we had been given as 
our inheritance what was to become the richest sec- 
tion of the habitable globe. Our past could not 
hamper us, and the future with untold wealth and an 
ilmost unlimited domain, lay before us *'like a land 
of dreams." We were free as no European nation 
could possibly be free to carry out in relative peace 
and security the great democratic experiment. Before 
the world our rich endowment brought with it 
a corresponding responsibility never adequately 
recognized by the mass of our citizens. We have been 
justly regarded by others and should more frequently 
and seriously regard ourselves as the initiators of and 
the sponsors for the democratic idea; government of 
the people, by the people, and for the people, as Lin- 
-coln put it in memorable words. It was such a state 
based on ideas of freedom and social and political 
equality that Washington sought to found, that Lin- 
-coln maintained against internal division, and that 
President Wilson is now defending against unwar- 
ranted foreign interference and the unprovoked 
aggression of an autocratic power. Our democracy 
today is for the first time in history called upon to 



Introduction 11 

justify itself and to defend itself against autocracy. 
The aini of democracy is the liberty and welfare of 
the individual; the aim of autocracy is the power of 
the rulers and the state. The idea of conquest, of 
forcing an alien rule upon a strange people is foreign 
to the spirit of democracy. It is, however, of the 
essence of autocratic governments. It is well, there- 
fore, that we now bethink ourselves and take counsel 
with our leaders. 



It is a mistake to believe that democracy as we 
know it in America is a form of government sanc- 
tioned by classical examples reaching back to remote 
antiquity and with a long tradition behind it. Those 
who are tempted to believe otherwise should read 
carefully a passage written in 1901 by no less an 
authority than Woodrow Wilson. 

"As a matter of fact democracy as we know it is no 
older than the end of the eighteenth century. The 
doctrines which sustain it can scarcely be said to 
derive any support at all from the practices of the 
classical states, or any countenance whatever from the 
principles of classical statesmen and philosophers. 
The citizens who constituted the people of the ancient 
republics were, when most numerous, a mere privi- 
leged class, a ruling minority of the population taken 
as a whole. Under their domination slaves abounded, 
and citizenship and even the privileges of the courts 
of justice were reserved for men of a particular blood 
and lineage. It never entered into the thought of any 
ancient republican to conceive of all men as equally 
entitled to take part in any government, or even in 



12 Democracy Today 

the control of any government, by votes cast or lots 
drawn. Those who were in the ranks of privileged 
citizenship despised those who were not, guarded their 
ranks very jealously against intruders, and used their 
power as a right singular and exclusive, theirs, not 
as men, but as Athenians of authentic extraction, as 
Romans of old patrician blood. 

''Modern democracy wears a very different aspect, 
and rests upon principles separated by the whole 
heaven from those of the Roman or Grecian demo- 
crat. Its theory is of equal rights without respect of 
blood or breeding. It knows nothing of a citizenship 
won by privilege or inherited through lines of descent 
which cannot be changed or broadened. Its thought 
is of a society without castes or classes, of an equality 
of political birthright which is without bound or lim- 
itation. Its foundations are set in a philosophy that 
would extend to all mankind an equal emancipation, 
make citizens of all men, and cut away everywhere 
exceptional privilege. 'All men are bom free and 
equal' is the classical sentence of its creed, and 
its dream is always of a state in which no man shall 
have mastery over another without his willing acqui- 
escence and consent. It speaks always of the sover- 
eignty of the people, and the rulers as the peoples' 
servants. 

• •• • • • •« 

"Democracy is the antithesis of all government by 
privilege. It excludes all hereditary right to rule, 
whether in a single family or in a single class or in 
any combination of classes. It makes the general 
welfare of society the end and object of law, and 
declares that no class, no aristocratic minority, no 
single group of men, however numerous, however 
capable, however enlightened, can see broadly enough 
or sufficiently free itself from bias to perceive a 
nation's needs in their entirety or guide its destinies 



Introduction 13 

for the benefit of all. The consent of the governed 
must at every turn check and determine the action of 
those who make and execute the laws." 

Neither is our democracy the first and primitive 
form of government as is sometimes supposed. It is as 
a matter of fact the latest form of government, 
designed to give the individual the greatest degree of 
liberty and responsibility. We must not therefore 
regard it as something which will "run itself" or 
which has "always been so." Indeed men of great 
authority like the English political historians, Lecky 
and Sir Henry Maine, have looked upon certain recent 
popular tendencies with grave misgiving. Maine 
admitted that the great tendency of recent decades has 
been to turn power more and more into the hands of 
the people, but felt that the movement was not intelli- 
gent, that the people did not know why they desired 
this power or what they would do once they had it in 
their possession. Lecky felt this same distrust. The 
quest for power in our democracy has only too often 
been selfish. If the people wish to exercise the great 
prerogatives of government, they must also assume the 
equally serious responsibility of molding "our confu- 
sion of purposes, traditions, habits, into a common 
ordered intention." 

The American people have come to us from every 
continent, they are of different races and diverging 
national traditions. They can only be united and 
welded into a truly great nation if we make these 
divergent traditions converge upon a definite and 
identical future. Though it must be a long task, it 



14 Democracy Today 

will be the easier because from whatever lands 
Americans have come and with whatever antecedent 
customs and habits of mind, they have come in the 
expectation of finding a land of freedom. Difficult as 
it may seem, it should not tierefore be impossible to 
polarize the hopes and aspirations of earnest men of 
many races and nations upon this central and uni- 
fying vision. In order to bring more clearly into our 
consciousness the meaning and bearing, of these ideals, 
this volume was planned. It aims to present some of 
the most important pronouncements by recent Amer- 
ican leaders and especially by President Wilson, 
which would help to make plain whence we come and 
whither we are tending. 

These expressions of democracy's ideals may well 
claim a place in the English courses of our schools 
and colleges. For, in the words of the statesman 
already quoted : ' ' These ideals have been very nobly 
expressed by some of the greatest thinkers of the 
^ace. The language in which they have been set for 
the thought of the world rings keen in the ear, as 
with a music of peace and good-will, and yet quick 
also with the energy of fine endeavor, lifting the 
thoughts to some of the highest conceptions of human 
progress. " 

In this presentation of the demoeratic idea as 
expounded by our leaders, it has been thought best to 
begin with Lincoln's famous Gettysburg Address and 
to follow this with some of the most notable pro- 
nouncements on demoeracy from his day to Wilson's. 
Lowell's Democracy is the more interesting as it 



Introduction 15 

shows us still on the defensive; and with its annota- 
tions will help to make clearer the growth of the 
democratic idea. Beside the pronouncements by rep- 
resentative Americans, the address by Lloyd George 
on America's entrance into the war is reprinted as 
particularly significant. It was no part of the writer's 
intention to make of this volume a war book, but the 
issues of democracy were so deeply involved in the 
War of 1914 that the conflict and the developments 
which led to it could not be ignored. For this reason 
we have included the most important utterances made 
by President Wilson during the war in that period when 
we were forced to fight to "make the world safe for 
democracy''; and the ^Yar Message and the Flag Day 
Address are printed with very full annotations which 
detail the various intrusions of Germany upon our 
rights. These notes are reproduced from the editions 
of these speeches published by the Committee on Public 
Information at Washington. Though in some cases they 
have been abbreviated, the meaning has not been 
changed. The notes on the T^ar Message were pre- 
pared for the Committee on Public Information by 
Professor William Stearns Davis of the University of 
Minnesota aided by Professor C. D. Allin and Dr. 
William Anderson, also of Minnesota; and those on 
the Flag Day Address, by Professors Wallace Note- 
stein, Elmer Stoll, August C. Krey, and William 
Anderson of the University of Minnesota, and Pro- 
fessor Guernsey Jones of the University of Nebraska. 
The editor has received considerable assistance 
from his friends and colleagues. He is especially 



1 V) Democracy Today 

indebted for help and suggestions to Professor Lind- 
say Todd Damon of Brown University, General Editor 
of the Lake English Classics, and to Guy Stanton 
Ford, Director of the Division on Civic and Educa- 
tional Co-operation of the Committee of Public 
Information at Washington. 



DEMOCRACY TODAY 



GETTYSBUKG ADDRESS 
Abraham Lincoln 

^ [delivered NOVEMBER 19, 1863, AT THE DEDICATION OF 
THE GETTYSBURG NATIONAL CEMETERY] 

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought 
forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in 
Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men 
are created equal. 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war; testing 
whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and 
so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a 
great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedi- 
cate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for 
those who here gave their lives that that nation might 
live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we 
should do this. 

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can 
not consecrate — we cannot hallow — this ground. The 
brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have 
consecrated it far above our poor power to add or de- 
tract. The world will little note, nor long remember 
what we say here^ but it can 'never forget what they 
did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedi- 
cated here to the unfinished work which they who 
fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is 

17 



18 Democracy Today 

rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task re- 
maining before us — that from these honored dead we 
take increased devotion to that cause for which they 
gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here 
highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in 
vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new 
birth of freedom — and that government of the people, 
by the people, for the people,^ shall not perish from 
the earth. 



DEMOCRACY 

James Russell Lowell 
[inaugural address on assuming the presidency 

OF the BIRMINGHAM AND MIDLAND INSTITUTE, 
BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND, OCTOBER 6, 3884] 

He must be a born leader or misleader of men, or 
must have been sent into the world unfurnished with 
that modulating and restraining balance-wheel which 
we call a sense of humor, who, in old age, has as 
strong confidence in his opinions and in the necessity 
of bringing the universe into conformity with them as 
he had in youth. In a world the very condition of 
whose being is that it should be in perpetual flux, 
where all seems mirage, and the one abiding thing is 
the effort to distinguish realities from appearances, 
the elderly man must be indeed of a singularly tough 
and valid fiber who is certain that he has any clarified 
residuum of experience, any assured verdict of reflec- 
tion, that deserves to be called an opinion, or who, 
even if he had, feels that he is justified in holding 
mankind by the button while he is expounding it. 
And in a world of daily — nay, almost hourly — jour- 
nalism, where every clever man, every man who thinks 
himself clever, or whom anybody else thinks clever, 
is called upon to deliver his judgment point-blank 
and at the word of command on every conceivable 
subject of human thought, or, on what sometimes 
seems to him very much the same thing, on every 
inconceivable display of human want of thought, there 

19 



20 Democracy Today 

is such a spendthrift waste of all those commonplaces 
which furnish the permitted staple of public discourse 
that there is little chance of beguiling a new tune out 
of the one-stringed instrument on which we have been 
thrumming so long. In this desperate necessity one 
is often tempted to think that, if all the words of 
the dictionary were tumbled down in a heap and 
then all those fortuitous juxtapositions and combina- 
tions that made tolerable sense were picked out and 
pieced together, we might find among them some 
poignant suggestions towards novelty of thought or 
expression. But, alas ! it is only the great poets who 
seem to have this unsolicited profusion of unexpected 
and incalculable phrase, this infinite variety of topic. 
For everybody else everything has been said before, 
and said over again after. He who has read his 
Aristotle will be apt to think that observation has on 
most points of general applicability said its last word, 
and he who has mounted the tower of Plato^ to look 
abroad from it will never hope to climb another with 
so lofty a vantage of speculation. Where it is so 
simple if not so easy a thing to hold one 's peace, why 
add to the general confusion of tongues? There is 
something disheartening, too, in being expected to 
fill up not less than a certain measure of time, as if 
the mind were an hour-glass, that need only be shaken 
and set on one end or the other, as the case may be, 
to run its allotted sixty minutes with decorous exacti- 
tude. I recollect being once told by the late eminent 
naturalist, Agassiz, that v/hen he was to deliver his 
first lecture as professor (at Ziirich, I believe) he had 



Democracy — Lowell 21 

grave doubts of his ability to occupy the prescribed 
three quarters of an hour. He was speaking without 
notes, and glancing anxiously from time to time at 
the watch that lay before him on the desk. ''When 
I had spoken a half hour, " he said, ' ' I had told them 
everything I knew in the world, everything! Then 
I began to repeat myself, ' ' he added, roguishly, ' ' and 
I have done nothing else ever since." Beneath the 
humorous exaggeration of the story I seemed to see 
the face of a very serious and improving moral. And 
yet if one were to say only what he had to say and 
then stopped, his audience would feel defrauded of 
their honest measure. Let us take courage by the 
example of the French, whose exportation of Bor- 
deaux wines increases as the area of their land in 
vineyards is diminished. 

To me, somewhat hopelessly revolving these things, 
the undelayable year has rolled round, and I find 
myself called upon to say something in this place, 
where so many wiser men have spoken before me. 
Precluded, in my quality of national guest, by motives 
of taste and discretion, from dealing with any ques- 
tion of immediate and domestic concern, it seemed to 
me wisest, or at any rate most prudent, to choose a 
topic of comparatively abstract interest, and to ask 
your indulgence for a few somewhat generalized 
remarks on a matter concerning which I had some 
experimental knowledge, derived from the use of such 
eyes and ears as Nature had been pleased to endow 
me withal, and such report as I had been able to win 
from them. The subject which most readily sug- 



22 Democracy Today 

gested itself was the spirit and the working of those 
conceptions of life and polity which are lumped 
together, whether for reproach or commendation, 
under the name of Democracy. By temperament and 
education of a conservative turn, I saw the last years 
of that quaint Arcadia^ which French travelers saw 
with delighted amazement a century ago, and have 
watched the change (to me a sad one) from an agri- 
cultural to a proletary population. The testimony 
of Balaam should carry some conviction. I have 
grown to manhood and am now growing old with the 
growth of this system of government in my native 
land, have watched its advances, or what some would 
call its encroachments, gradual and irresistible as 
those of a glacier, have been an ear-witness to the 
forebodings of wise and good and timid men, and 
have lived to see those forebodings belied by the 
course of events, which is apt to show itself humor- 
ously careless of the reputation of prophets. I 
recollect hearing a sagacious old gentleman say in 
1840 that the doing away with the property qualifica- 
tion for suffrage twenty years before had been the 
ruin of the State of Massachusetts;^ that it had put 
public credit and private estate alike at the mercy of 
demagogues. I lived to see that Commonwealth 
twenty odd years later paying the interest on her 
bonds in gold, though it cost her sometimes nearly 
three for one to keep her faith, and that while suffer- 
ing an unparalleled drain of men and treasure in help- 
ing to sustain the unity and self-respect of the nation.* 
If universal suffrage has worked iM in our larger 



Democracy — Lowell 



')o 



cities, as it certainly has, this has been mainly because 
the hands that wielded it were untrained to its use. 
There the election of a majority of the trustees of 
the public money is controlled by the most ignorant 
and vicious of a population which has come to us from 
abroad, wholly unpracticed in self-government and 
incapable of assimilation by American habits and 
methods. But the finances of our towns, where the 
native tradition is still dominant and whose affairs 
are discussed and settled in a public assembly of the 
people, have been in general honestly and prudently 
administered. Even in manufacturing towns, where 
a majority of the voters live by their daily wages, 
it is not so often the recklessness as the moderation 
of public expenditure that surprises an old-fashioned 
observer. ' ' The beggar is in the saddle at last, ' ' cries 
Proverbial Wisdom. * ' Why, in the name of all former 
experience, doesn't he ride to the Devil?" Because 
in the very act of mounting he ceased to be a beggar 
and became part owner of the piece of property he 
bestrides. The last thing we need be anxious about 
is property. It always has friends or the means of 
making them. If riches have wings to fly away from 
their owner, they have wings also to escape danger. 
I hear America sometimes playfully accused of 
sending you all your storms, and am in the habit of 
parrying the charge by alleging that we are enabled 
to do this because, in virtue of our protective system, 
we can afford to make better bad weather than any- 
body else. And what wiser use could we make of it 
than to export it in return for the paupers which 



24 Democracy Today 

some European countries are good enough to send 
over to us who have not attained to the same skill in j 
the manufacture of them? But bad weather is not] 
the worst thing that is laid at our door. A French j 
gentleman, not long ago, forgetting Burke 's^ monition i| 
of how unwise it is to draw an indictment against a. 
whole people, has charged us with the responsibility 
of whatever he finds disagreeable in the morals or 
manners of his countrymen. If M. Zola^ or some other ■ 
competent witness would only go into the box and tell 
us what those morals and manners were before our- 
example corrupted them ! But I confess that I find . 
little to interest and less to edify me in these interna- < 
tional bandyings of ' ' You 're another. ' ' 

I shall address myself to a single point only in the 
long list of offenses of which we are more or less 
gravely accused, because that really includes all the 
rest. It is that we are infecting the Old World with ; 
what seems to be thought the entirely new disease 
of Democracy."^ It is generally people who are in 
what are called easy circumstances who can afford the 
leisure to treat themselves to a handsome complaint, 
and these experience an immediate alleviation when- 
once they have found a sonorous Greek name to abuse] 
it by. There is something consolatory also, something ] 
flattering to their sense of personal dignity, and to that j 
conceit of singularity which is the natural recoil from ] 
our uneasy consciousness of being commonplace, in \ 
thinking ourselves victims of a malady by which no^ 
one had ever suffered before. Accordingly they find it \ 
simpler to class under one comprehensive heading 



Democracy — Loivell 25 

whatever they find offensive to their nerves, their 
tastes their interests, or what they suppose to be 
ttieir opinions, and christen it Democracy, much as 
physicians label every obscure disease gout, or as 
cross-grained fellows lay their ill-temper to the 
weather. But is it really a new ailment, and, if it be, 
is America • answerable for it"? Even if she were, 
would it account for the phylloxera,^ and hoof-and- 
mouth disease, and bad harvests, and bad English, 
and the German bands, and the Boers,^^ and all the 
other discomforts with which these later days have 
vexed the souls of them that go in chariots? Yet I 
have seen the evil example of Democracy in America 
cited as the source and origin of things quite as 
heterogeneous and quite as little connected with it by 
any sequence of cause and effect. Surely this ferment 
is nothing new. It has been at work for centuries, and 
we are more consci-^'US of it only because in this age 
of publicity, where the newspapers offer a rostrum 
to whoever has a grievance, or fancies that he has, 
the bubbles and scum thrown up by it are more 
noticeable on the surface than in those dumb ages 
when there was a cover of silence and suppression on 
the cauldron. Bernardo Navagero,^ speaking of the 
Provinces of Lower Austria in 1546, tells us that 
"in them there are five sorts of persons. Clergy, 
Barons, Nobles, Burghers, and Peasanis. Of these last 
no account is made, because they have no voice in the 
Diet/' 

Nor was it among the people that subversive or 
mistaken doctrines had their rise. A Father of the 



26 Democracy Today 

Church^^ said that property was theft many centuries 
before Proudhon^^ was born. Bourdaloue^^ reaffirmed 
it. Montesquieu^^ was the inventor of national 
workshops, and of the theory that the State owed 
every man a living. Nay, was not the Church herself 
the first organized Democracy ?^^ A few centuries ago 
the chief end of man was to keep his soul alive, and 
then the little kernel of leaven that sets the gases at 
work was religious, and produced the Reformation. ! 
Even in that, far-sighted persons like the Emperor ! 
Charles V. saw the germ of political and social revolu- j 
tion.^^ Now that the chief end of man seems to have 
become the keeping of the body alive, and as comfort- 
ably alive as possible, the leaven also has become 
wholly political and social. But there had also been 
social upheavals before the Reformation and contem- 
poraneously with it, especially among men of Teu- 
tonic race. The Reformation gave outlet and direc- 
tion to an unrest already existing. Formerly the 
immense majority of men — our brothers — knew only 
their sufferings, their wants, and their desires. They 
are beginning now to know their opportunity and 
their power. All persons who see deeper than their 
plates are rather inclined to thank God for it than to 
bewail it, for the sores of Lazarus have a poison in 
them against which Dives has no antidote.^^ 

There can be no doubt that the spectacle of a great 
and prosperous Democracy on the other side of the 
Atlantic must react powerfully on the aspirations and 
political theories of men in the Old World who do 
not find things to their mind ; but, whether for good 



Democracy — Lowell 27 

or evil, it should not be overlooked that the acorn 
from which it sprang was ripened on the British oak. 
Every successive swarm that has gone out from this 
officina gentium^'^ has, when left to its own instincts — 
may I not call them hereditary instincts? — assumed 
a more or less thoroughly democratic form. This 
would seem to show, what I believe to be the fact, 
that the British Constitution, under whatever dis- 
guises of prudence or decorum, is essentially demo- 
cratic. England, indeed, may be called a monarchy 
with democratic tendencies, the United States a democ- 
racy with conservative instincts. People are continu- 
ally saying that America is in the air, and I am glad 
to think it is, since this means only that a clearer con- 
ception of human claims and human duties is begin- 
ning to be prevalent. The discontent with the existing 
order of things, however, pervaded the atmosphere 
wherever the conditions were favorable, long before 
Columbus, seeking the back door of Asia, found him- 
self knocking at the front door of America. I say 
wherever the conditions were favorable, for it is cer- 
tain that the germs of disease do net stick or find a 
prosperous field for their development and noxious 
activity unless where the simplest sanitary precautions 
have been neglected. ' ' For this effect defective comes 
by cause," as Polonius said long ago.^^ It is only by 
instigation of the wrongs of men that what are called 
the Rights of Man^^ become turbulent and dangerous. 
It is then only that they syllogize unwelcome truths. 
It is not the insurrections of ignorance that are dan- 
gerous, but the revolts of intelligence : 



28 Democracy Today 

The Tvicked and the weak rebel in vain, \ 

Slaves by their own compulsion.^" 

Had the governing classes in France during the las; 
century paid as much heed tO' their proper businesii 
as to their pleasures or manners, the guillotine neec; 
never have severed that spinal marrow of orderly anc' 
secular tradition tlirough which in a normally consti 
tuted state the brain sympathizes with the extremities'; 
and sends will and impulsion thither. It is only whei 
the reasonable and practicable are denied that meii 
demand the unreasonable and impracticable; onlj 
when the possible is made difficult that they fancy tht 
impossible to be easy. Fairy tales are made out oj 
the dreams of the poor. No ; the sentiment which lici: 
at the root of democracy is nothing new. I am speak i 
ing always of a sentiment, a spirit, and not of a forTi| 
of government ; for this was but the outgrowth of th( 
other and not its cause. This sentiment is merely ax 
expression of the natural wish of people to have £' 
hand, if need be a controlling hand, in the managej 
ment of their own affairs. What is new is that the;y 
are more and more gaining that control, and learnin^l 
more and more how to be worthy of it. What w( 
used to call the tendency or drift — ^what we are being 
taught to call more wisely the evolution of things—' 
has for some time been setting steadily in this direc 
tion. There is no good in arguing with the inevitable 
The only argument available with an east wind is tc 
put on your overcoat. And in this case, also, th( 
prudent will prepare themselves to encounter wh 
they cannot prevent. Some people advise us to pui 



I 



Democracy — Lowell 29 

on the brakes, as if the movement of which we are 
conscious were that of a railway train running down 
an incline. But a metaphor is no argument, though 
it be sometimes the gunpowder to drive one home and 
imbed it in the memory. Our disquiet comes of what 
nurses and other experienced persons call growing- 
pains, and need not seriously alarm us. They are 
what every generation before us^ — certainly every 
generation since the invention of printing — has gone 
through with more or less good fortune. To the door 
of every generation there comes a knocking, and 
unless the household, like the Thane of Cawdor^^ and 
his wife, have been doing some deed without a name, 
they need not shudder. It turns out at worst to be a 
poor relation who wishes to come in out of the cold. 
The porter always grumbles and is slow to open. 
("Who's there, in the name of Beelzebub ? " he mutters. 
Not a change for the better in our human housekeep- 
ing has ever taken place that wise and good men have 
not opposed it, — have not prophesied with the alder- 
man that the world would wake up to find its throat 
cut in consequence of it. The world, on the contrary, 
wakes up, rubs its eyes, yawns, stretches itself, and 
goes about its business as if nothing had happened. 
Suppression of the slave trade, abolition of slavery^ 
trade unions, — at all of these excellent people shook 
their heads despondingly, and murmured ' ' Ichabod. ' '^^ 
But the trade unions are now debating instead of 
conspiring, and we all read their discussions with 
somfort and hope, sure that they are learning the 
biisiness of citizenship and tlie difficulties of practical 
legislation. 



30 Democracy Today 

One of the most curious of these frenzies of exeluv 
sion was that against the emancipation of the Jews. 
All share in the government of the world was denied 
for centuries to perhaps the ablest, certainly the most 
tenacious, race that had ever lived in it — the race to 
whom we owed our religion and the purest spiritual 
stimulus and consolation to be found in all literature 
— ^a race in which ability seems as natural and heredi- 
tary as the curve of their noses, and whose blood, fur- 
tively mingling with the bluest bloods in Europe, has 
quickened them with its own indomitable impulsion. 
We drove them into a corner, but they had theii' 
revenge, as the wronged are always sure to have i1 
sooner or later. They made their corner the countei 
and banking-house of the world, and thence they ruk 
it and us with their ignobler scepter of finance. Your 
grandfathers mobbed Priestley^^ only that you might 
set up his statue and make Birmingham the headquar- 
ters of English Unitarianism. We hear it said some- 
times that this is an age of transition, as if that made 
matters clearer; but ean any one point us to an age 
that was not? If he could, he would show us an age 
of stagnation. The question for us, as it has been foi 
all before us, is to make the transition gradual and 
easy, to see that our points are right so that the train' 
may not come to grief. For we should remember thai 
nothing is more natural for people whose educatior 
has been neglected than to spell evolution with ar 
initial ' ' r. " A great man struggling with the storms 
of fate has been called a sublime spectacle ; but surely 
a great man wrestling with these new forces that have 



Democracy — Lowell 31 

3ome into the world, mastering them and controlling 
them to beneficent ends, would be a yet sublimer. 
Here is not a danger, and if there were it would be 
3nly a better school of manhood, a nobler scope for am- 
bition. I have hinted that what people are afraid of 
in democracy is less the thing itself than what they 
gonceive to be its necessary adjuncts and consequences. 
It is supposed to reduce all mankind to a dead level of 
nediocrity in character and culture, to vulgarize men's 
conceptions of life, and therefore their code of morals, 
manners, and conduct — to endanger the rights of 
property and possession.-** But I believe that the real 
gravamen of the charges lies in the habit it has of 
making itself generally disagreeable by asking the 
Powers that Be at the most inconvenient moment 
whether they are the powers that ought to be. If 
the powers that be are in a condition to give a sat- 
isfactory answer to this inevitable question, they need 
feel in no way discomfited by it. 

Few people take the trouble of trying to find out 
what democracy really is. Yet this would be a great 
help, for it is our lawless and uncertain thoughts, it 
is the indefiniteness of our impressions, that fill dark- 
ness, whether mental or physical, with specters and 
hobgoblins. Democracy is nothing more than an 
experiment in government, more likely to succeed in 
a new soil, but likely to be tried in all soils, which 
must stand or fall on its own merits as others have 
done before it. For there is no trick of perpetual 
motion in politics any more than in mechanics. Presi- 
dent Lincoln defined democracy to be ''the govern- 



32 Democracy Today 

ment of the people by the people for the people." 
This is a sufficiently compact statement of it as a 
political arrangement. Theodore Parker^^ said that 
* ' Democracy meant not ' I 'm as good as you are, ' but 
'You're as good as I am.' " And this is the ethicali 
conception of it, necessary as a complement of the 
other; a conception which, could it be made actual 
and practical, would easily solve all the riddles that 
the old sphinx of political and social economy who sits 
by the roadside has been proposing to mankind from 
the beginning, and which mankind have shown such a 
singular talent for answering wrongly. In this sense, 
Christ was the first true democrat that ever breathed | 
as the old dramatist Dekker said he was the first true 
gentleman.^^ The characters may be easily doubled 
so strong is the likeness between them. A beautifuli 
and profound parable of the Persian poet Jellaladeen^' 
tells us that ''One knocked at the Beloved's door, and 
a voice asked from within 'Who is there?' and h( 
answered 'It is I.' Then the voice said, 'This housC; 
will not hold me and thee ' ; and the door was no- 
opened. Then went the lover into the desert anc 
fasted and prayed in solitude, and after a year ho 
returned and knocked again at the door; and agaii 
the voice asked 'Who is there?' and he said 'It is thy 
self; and the door was opened to him." But that ii 
idealism, you will say, and this is an only too pracl 
tical world. I grant it; but I am one of those wh?| 
believe that the real will never find an irremovabi 
basis till it rests on the ideal.-'^^ It used to be though 
that a democracy was possible only in a small terri 



Democracy — Lowell 33 

.Qj.y 28 and this is doubtless true of a democracy 
strictly defined, for in such all the citizens decide 
iirectly upon every question of public concern in a 
general assembly. An example still survives in the 
iny Swiss canton of Appenzell. But this inunediate 
intervention of the people in their own affairs is nat 
[)f the essence of democracy ; it is not necessary, nor 
indeed, in most cases, practicable. Demoeracies to 
which Mr. Lincoln's definition would fairly enough 
apply have existed, and now exist, in which, though 
the supreme authority reside in the people, yet they 
can act only indirectly on the national policy. This 
g-eneration has seen a democracy with an imperial 
igurehead,"^^ and in all that have ever existed the 
}ody politic has never embraced all the inhabitants 
ncluded within its territory, the right to share in 
the direction of affairs has been confined to citizens, 
and citizenship has been further restricted by various 
limitations, sometimes of property, sometimes of 
nativity, and always of age and sex. 

The framers of the American Constitution were 
far from wishing or intending to found a democracy 
in the strict sense of the word,^^ though, as was inev- 
itable, every expansion of the scheme of government 
they elaborated has been in a democratical direction. 
But this has been generally the slow result of growth, 
and not the sudden innovation of theory ; in fact, they 
had a profound disbelief in theory, and knew better 
than to commit the folly of breaking with the past. 
They were not seduced by the French fallacy that a 
new system of government could be ordered like a 



34 Democracy Today 

new suit of clothes.^^ They would as soon have thoughl 
of ordering a new suit of flesh and skin. It is only 
on the roaring loom of time that the stuff is woven 
for such a vesture of their thought and experience 
as they were meditating. They recognized fully thei 
value of tradition and habit as the great allies of 
permanence and stability. They all had that distaste 
for innovation which belonged to their race, and many 
of them a distrust of human nature derived from 
their creed. The day of sentiment was over, and 
no dithyrambic affirmations or fine-drawn analyses of 
the Rights of Man would serve their present turn. 
This was a practical question, and they addressed 
themselves to it as men of knowledge and judgment 
should. Their problem was how- to adapt English 
principles and precedents to the new conditions of 
American life, and they solved it with singular discre 
tion. They put as many obstacles as they could con 
trive, not in the way of the people's will, but of their 
whim. With few exceptions they probably admitted 
the logic of the then accepted syllogism, — democracy, 
anarchy, despotism.^^ But this formula was framed 
upon the experience of small cities shut up to stew 
within their narrow walls where the number of citi- 
zens made but an inconsiderable fraction of the inhab 
itants, where every passion was reverberated from 
house to house and from man to man with gathering 
rumor till every impulse became gregarious and there- 
fore inconsiderate, and every popular assembly 
needed but an iniusion of eloquent sophistry to turn 
it into a mob, all the more dangerous because sancti- 
fied with the formality of law. 



Democracy — Lowell 35 

Fortunately their case was wholly different. They 
were to legislate for a widely scattered population and 
for States already practiced in the discipline of a par- 
tial independence. They had an unequaled oppor- 
tunity and enormous advantages. The material they 
had to work upon was already democratical by 
instinct and habitude. It was tempered to their 
hands by more than a century's schooling in self- 
government. They had but to give permanent and 
conservative form to a ductile mass.^^ In giving 
impulse and direction to their new institutions, espe- 
cially in supplying them with checks and balances, 
they had a great help and safeguard in their federal 
organization. The different, sometimes conflicting, 
interests and social systems of the several States made 
existence as a Union and coalescence into a nation con- 
ditional on a constant practice of moderation and 
compromise. The very elements of disintegration 
were the best guides in political training. Their chil- 
dren learned the lesson of compromise only too well, 
and it was the application of it to a question of 
fundamental morals that cost us our civil war.*^^ We 
learned once for all that compromise makes a good 
umbrella but a poor roof; that it is a temporary 
I expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to 
be unwise in statesmanship. 

Has not the trial of democracy in America proved, 
on the whole, successful? If it had not, would the 
Old World be vexed with any fears of its proving con- 
tagious ? This trial would have been less severe could 
it have been made with a people homogeneous in race, 



36 Democracy Today 

language, and traditions, whereas the United States 
have been called on to absorb and assimilate enormous 
masses of foreign population heterogeneous in all 
these respects, and drawn mainly from that class which 
might fairly say that the world was not their friend, 
nor the world's law. The previous condition too 
often justified the traditional Irishman, who, landing 
in New York and asked what his politics were, 
inquired if there was a Government there, and on 
being told that there was, retorted, ''Thin I'm agin 
it!" We have taken from Europe the poorest, the 
most ignorant, the most turbulent of her people, and 
have made them over into good citizens, who have 
added to our wealth, and who are ready to die in 
defence of a country and of institutions which they 
know to be worth dying for. The exceptions have 
been (and they are lamentable exceptions) where 
these hordes of ignorance and poverty have coagulated 
in great cities. But the social system is yet to seek 
which has not to look the same terrible wolf in the 
eyes. On the other hand, at this very moment Irish 
peasants are buying up the worn-out farms of Massa- 
chusetts, and making them productive again by the 
same virtues of industry and thrift that once made 
them profitable to the. English ancestors of the men 
who are deserting them. To have achieved even these 
prosaic results (if you choose to call them so), and 
that out of materials the most discordant, — I might 
say the most recalcitrant, — argues a certain beneficent 
virtue in the system that could do it, and is not to 
be accounted for by mere luck. Carlyle said scorn-' 



Democracy — Lowell 37 

fully that America meant only roast turkey every day 
for everybody.""* He forgot that States, as Baeon^^' 
said of wars, go on their bellies. As for the security 
of property, it should be tolerably well secured in a. 
country where every other man hopes to be rich, even 
though the only property qualification be the owner- 
ship of two hands that add to the general wealth. 
Is it not the best security for anything to interest the 
largest possible number of persons in its preservation 
and the smallest in its division? In point of fact, 
far-seeing^^ men count the increasing power of wealth 
and its combinations as one of the chief dangers with 
which the institutions of the United States are threat- 
ened in the not distant future. The right of individ- 
ual property is no doubt the very corner-stone of 
civilization as hitherto understood, but I am a little 
impatient of being told that property is entitled to 
exceptional consideration because it bears all the bur- 
dens of the State. It bears those, indeed, which can 
most easily be borne, but poverty pays with its person 
the chief expenses of war, pestilence, and famine. 
Wealth should not forget this, for poverty is begin- 
ning to think of it now and then. Let me not be 
misunderstood. 1 see as clearly as any man possibly 
can, and rate as highly, the value of wealth, and of 
hereditary wealth, as the security of refinement, the 
feeder of all those arts that ennoble and beautify life, 
and as making a country worth living in. Many an 
ancestral hall here in England has been a nursery of 
that culture which has been of example and benefit 
to all. Old gold has a civilizing virtue which new 
gold must grow old to be capable of secreting. 



38 Democracy Today 

I should not think of coming before you to defend 
or to criticize any form of government. All have 
their virtues, all their defects, and all have illustrated 
one period or another in the history of the race, with 
signal services to humanity and culture. There is not 
one that could stand a cynical cross-examination by 
an experienced criminal lawyer, except that of a per- 
fectly wise and perfectly good despot, such as the 
world has never seen, except in that white-haired king 
of Browning's, who 

Lived long ago 
In the morning of the world, 
When Earth was nearer Heaven than now. ^ 

The English race, if they did not invent government 
by discussion, have at least carried it nearest to per- 
fection in practice. It seems a very safe and reason- 
able contrivance for occupying the attention of the 
country, and is certainly a better way of settling 
questions than by push of pike. Yet, if one should 
ask it why it should not rather be called government 
by gabble, it would have to fumble in its pocket 
a good while before it found the change for a con- 
vincing reply. As matters stand, too, it is beginning 
to be doubtful whether Parliament and Congress sit 
at Westminster and Washington or in the editors' 
rooms of the leading journals, so thoroughly is every- 
thing debated before the authorized and responsible 
debaters get on their legs. And what shall we say of 
government by a majority of voices? To a person 
who in the last century would have called himself an 
Impartial Observer, a numerical preponderance seems, 



Democracy — Lowell 39 

an the whole, as clumsy a way of arriving at truth as- 
could well be devised,^^ but experience has apparently 
shown it to be a convenient arrangement for deter- 
mining what may be expedient or advisable or prac- 
ticable at any given moment. Truth, after all, wears 
a different face to everybody, and it would be too 
tedious to wait till all were agreed. She is said to 
lie at the bottom of a well, for the very reason, per- 
haps, that whoever looks down in search of her sees 
his own image at the bottom, and is persuaded not 
only that he has seen the goddess, but that she is far 
better looking than he had imagined. 

The arguments against universal suffrage are 
equally unanswerable. ''What," w^e exclaim, ''shall 
Tom, Dick, and Harry have as much weight in the 
scale as I ? " Of course, nothing could be mo^e absurd. 
And yet universal suffrage has not been the instru- 
ment of greater unwisdom than contrivances of a 
more select description. Assemblies could be men- 
tioned composed entirely of Masters of Arts and Doc- 
tors in Divinity which have sometimes shown traces 
of human passion or prejudice in their votes. Have 
the Serene Highnesses and Enlightened Classes car- 
ried on the business of Mankind so well, then, that 
there is no use in trying a less costly method? The- 
democratic theory is that those Constitutions are likely 
to prove steadiest which have the broadest base, that 
the right to vote makes a safety-valve of every voter,. 
and that the best way of teaching a man how to vote 
is to give him the chance of practice. For the ques- 
tion is no longer the academic one, "Is it wise to give 



40 Democracy Today 

^very man the ballot?" but rather the practical one, 
*'Is it prudent to deprive whole classes of it any- 
longer ?" It may be conjectured that it is cheaper in 
the long run to lift men up than to hold them down, 
and that the ballot in their hands is less dangerous 
to society than a sense of wrong in their heads. At 
any rate this is the dilemma to which the drift of 
■opinion has been for some time sweeping us, and in 
politics a dilemma is a more unmanageable thing to 
hold by the horns than a wolf by the ears. It is said 
that the right of suffrage is not valued when it is 
indiscriminately bestowed, and there may be some 
truth in this, for I have observed that what men prize 
most is a privilege, even if it be that of v'^.hief mourner 
at a funeral. But is there not danger that it will be 
valued at more than its worth if denied, and that 
some illegitimate way will be sought to make up for 
the want of it? Men who have a voice in public 
affairs are at once affiliated with one or other of the 
great parties between which society is divided, merge 
their individual hopes and opinions in its safer, 
because more generalized, hopes and opinions, are dis- 
ciplined by its tactics, and acquire, to a certain 
degree, the orderly qualities of an army. They no 
longer belong to a class, but to a body corporate. Of 
one thing, at least, we may be certain, that, under 
whatever method of helping things to go wrong man 's 
wit can contrive, those who have the divine right to 
govern will be found to govern in the end, and that 
the highest privilege to which the majority of man- 
kind can aspire is that of being governed by those 



Democracy — Lowell 41 

wiser tban they. Universal suffrage has in the United 
States sometimes been made the instrument of incon- 
siderate changes, under the notion of reform, and 
this from a misconception of the true meaning of 
popular government. One of these has been the sub- 
stitution in many of the states of popular election for 
official selection in the choice of judges. The same 
system applied to military officers was the source of 
much evil during our civil war, and, I believe, had 
to be abandoned.^^ But it has been also true that on 
all great questions of national policy a reserve of 
prudence and discretion has been brought out at the 
critical moment to turn the scale in favor of a wiser 
decision. An appeal to the reason of the people has 
never been known to fail in the long run. It is, 
perhaps, true that, by effacing the principle of passive 
obedience, democracy, ill understood, has slackened 
the spring of that ductility to discipline which is 
essential to "the unity and married calm of States." 
But I feel assured that experience and necessity will 
cure this evil, as they have shown their power to cure 
others. And under what frame of policy have evils 
ever been remedied till they became intolerable, and 
shook men out of their indolent indifference through 
their fears? 

We are told that the inevitable result of democracy 
is to sap the foundations of personal independence, to 
weaken the principle of authority, to lessen the 
respect due to eminence, whether in station, virtue, 
or genius. If these things were so, society could not 
hold together. Perhaps the best forcing-house of robust 



42 Democracy Today 

individuality would be where public opinion is inclined 
to be most overbearing, as he must be of heroic 
temper who should walk along Piccadilly*^ at the 
height of the season in a soft hat. As for authority, 
it is one of the symptoms of the time that the religious 
reverence for it js declining everj^where, but this is 
due partly to the fact that statecraft is no longer 
looked upon as a mystery, but as a business, and 
partly to the decay of superstition, by which I mean 
the habit of respecting what we are told to respect 
rather than what is respectable in itself. There is 
more rough and tumble in the American democracy 
than is altogether agreeable to people of sensitive 
nerves and refined habits, and the people take their 
political duties lightly and laughingly, as is, perhaps, 
neither unnatural nor unbecoming in a young giant. 
Democracies can no more jump away from their own 
shadows than the rest of us can. They no doubt 
sometimes make mistakes and pay honor to men who 
do not deserve it. But they do this because they 
believe them worthy of it, and though it be true that 
the idol is the measure of the worshipper, yet the 
worship has in it the germ of a nobler religion. But 
is it democracies alone that fall into these errors? 
I, who have seen it proposed to erect a statue to 
Hudson,*^ the railway king, and have heard Louis 
Napoleon*^ hailed as the savior of society by men who 
certainly had no democratic associations or leanings, 
am not ready to think so. But democracies have like- 
wise their finer instincts. I have also seen the wisest 
statesman and most pregnant speaker of our genera- 



Democrcwy — Lowell 45 

tion, a man of humble birth and ungainly manners,, 
of little culture beyond what his own genius supplied, 
become more absolute in power than any monarch of 
modern times through the reverence of his country- 
men for his honesty, his wisdom, his sincerity, hia 
faith in God and man, and the nobly humane sim- 
plicity of his character. And I remember another 
whom popular respect enveloped as with a halo, the- 
least vulgar of men, the most austerely genial, and 
the most independent of opinion. Wherever he went 
he never met a stranger, but everywhere neighbors 
and friends proud of him as their ornament and 
decoration. Institutions which could bear and breed 
such men as Lincoln and Emerson had surely some- 
energy for good. No, amid all the fruitless turmoil 
and miscarriage of the world, if there be one thing 
steadfast and of favorable omen, one thing to make- 
optimism distrust its own obscure distrust, it is the 
rooted instinct in men to admire what is better and 
more beautiful than themselves. The touchstone of 
political and social institutions is their ability to 
supply them with worthy objects of this sentiment, 
which is the very tap-root of civilization and progress. 
There would seem to be no readier way of feeding it 
with the elements of growth and vigor than such an 
organization of society as will enable men to respect 
themselves, and so to justify them in respecting 
others. 

Such a result is quite possible under other condi- 
tions than those of an avowedly democratical Consti- 
tution. For I take it that the real essence of democ- 



44 Democracy Today 

racy was fairly enough defined by the First Napoleon 
when he said that the French Revolution meant "la 
carriers ouverte aux talents" — a clear pathway for 
merit of whatever kind.^^ I should be inclined to 
paraphrase this by calling democracy that form of 
society, no matter what its political classification, in 
which every man had a chance and knew that he had 
it. If a man can climb, and feels himself encouraged to 
climb, from a coalpit to the highest position for which 
he is fitted, he can well afford to be indifferent what 
name is given to the government under which he lives. 
The Bailli of Mirabeau, uncle of the more famous 
tribune of that name, wrote in 1771 : ' ' The English 
are, in my opinion, a hundred times more agitated 
and more unfortunate than the very Algerines them- 
selves, because they do not know and will not know 
till the destruction of their overswollen power, which 
I believe very near, whether they are monarchy, aris- 
tocracy, or democracy, and wish to play the part of 
all three." England has not been obliging enough 
to fulfill the Bailli 's prophecy, and perhaps it was this 
very carelessness about the name, and concern about 
the substance of popular government, this skill in 
getting the best out of things as they are, in utilizing 
all the motives which influence men, and in giving 
one direction to many impulses, that has been a prin- 
cipal factor of her greatness and power. Perhaps it 
is fortunate to have an unwritten constitution,'*^ for 
men are prone to be tinkering the work- of their o.wn 
hands, whereas they are more willing to let time and 
circumstance mend or modify what time and circum- 



Democracy — Lowell 45 

stances have made. All free governments, whatever 
their name, are in reality governments by public? 
opinion, and it is on the quality of this public opin- 
ion that their prosperity depends. It is, therefore, 
their first duty to purify the element from which 
they draw the breath of life. With the growth af 
democracy grows also the fear, if not the danger, 
that this atmosphere may be corrupted with poison- 
ous exhalations from lower and more malarious levels, 
and the question of sanitation becomes more instant 
and pressing. Democracy in its best sense is merely 
the letting in of light and air. Lord Sherbrooke,^^ with 
his usual epigrammatic terseness, bids you educate 
your future rulers. But would this alone be a suffi- 
cient safeguard? To educate the intelligence is to 
enlarge the horizon of its desires and wants. And 
it is well that this should be so. But the enterprise 
must go deeper and prepare the way for satisfying 
those desires and wants in so far as they are legiti- 
mate. What is really ominous of danger to the exist- 
ing order of things is not democracy (which, properly 
understood, is a conservative force), but the Socialism, 
which may find a fulcrum in it. If we cannot equalize 
conditions and fortunes^^ any more than we can 
equalize the brains of men— and a very sagacious per- 
son has said that ''where two men ride of a horse 
one must ride behind"— we can yet, perhaps, do 
something to correct those methods and influences 
that lead to enormous inequalities, and to prevent their 
growing more enormous. It is all very well to pooh- 
pooh Mr. George^^ and to prove him mistaken in his 



46 Democracy Today 

political economy. I do not believe that land should 
be divided because the quantity of it is limited by 
nature. Of what may this not be said? A fortiori^ 
we might on the same principle insist on a division 
of human wit, for I have observed that the quantity 
of this has been even more inconveniently limited. 
Mr. George himself has an inequitably large share of 
it. But he is right in his impelling motive; right, 
also, I am convinced, in insisting that humanity makes 
a part, by far the most important part, of political 
economy ; and in thinking man to be of more concern 
and more convincing than the longest columns of 
figures in the world. For unless you include human 
nature in your addition, your total is sure to be wrong 
and your deductions from it fallacious. Communism 
means barbarism, but Socialism means, or wishes 
to mean, cooperation and community of interests, 
sympathy, the giving to the hands not so large 
a share as to the brains, but a larger share than 
hitherto in the wealth they must combine to produce 
— means, in short, the practical application of Chris- 
tianity to life, and has 'in it the secret of an orderly 
and benign reconstruction. State Socialism would 
cut off the very roots in personal character — self-help, 
forethought, and frugality — ^which nourish and sus- 
tain the trunk and branches of every vigorous Com- 
monwealth. 

I do not believe in violent changes, nor do I expect 
them. Things in possession have a very firm grip.**^ 
One of the strongest cements of society is the convic- 
tion of mankind that the state of things into which 



Democracy — Lowell 47 

they are born is a part of the order of the universe, 
as natural, let us say, as that the sun should go round 
the earth. It is a conviction that they will not sur- 
render except on compulsion, and a wise society 
should look to it that this compulsion be not put upon 
them. For the individual man there is no radical 
cure, outside of human nature itself, for the evils 
to which human nature is heir. The rule will always 
hold good that you must 

Be your own palace or the world 's your gaol. 

But for artificial evils, for evils that spring from 
want of thought, thought must find a remedy some- 
where. There has been no period of time in which 
wealth has been more sensible of its duties than now. 
It builds hospitals, it establishes missions among the 
poor, it endows schools. It is one of the advantages 
of accumulated wealth, and of the leisure it renders 
possible, that people have time to think of the wants 
and sorrows of their fellows. But all these remedies 
are partial and palliative merely. It is as if we should 
apply plasters to a single pustule of the smallpox 
with a view of driving out the disease. The true way 
is to discover and to extirpate the germs. As society 
is now constituted these are in the air it breathes, 
in the water it drinks, in things that seem, and which 
it has always believed, to be the most innocent and 
healthful. The evil elements it neglects corrupt these 
in their springs and pollute them in their courses. 
Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that 
the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never 



48 Democracy Today 

come. The world has outlived much, and will outlive 
a great deal more, and men have contrived to be 
happy in it. It has shown the strength of its con- 
stitution in nothing more than in surviving the quack 
medicines it has tried. In the scales of the destinies 
brawn will never weigh so much as brain. Our heal- 
ing is not in the storm or in the whirlwind, it is not 
in monarchies, or aristocracies, or democracies, but 
will be revealed by the still small voice that speaks 
to the conscience and the heart, prompting us to a 
wider and wiser humanity. 



THE MESSAGE OP WASHINGTON 

Grover Cleveland 

[delivered at CHICAGO, FEBRUARY 22, 1907] 

In furtherance of the high endeavor of your organ- 
ization, it would have been impossible to select for 
observance any other civic holiday having as broad 
and fitting a significance as this. It memorizes the 
birth of one whose glorious deeds are transcendently 
above all others recorded in our national annals; and, 
in memorizing the birth of Washington, it commem- 
orates the incarnation of all the virtues and all the 
ideals that made our nationality possible, and gave 
it promise of growth and strength. It is a holiday 
that belongs exclusively to the American people. All 
that Washington did was bound up in our national 
life, and became interwoven with the warp of our 
national destiny. The battles he fought were fought 
for American liberty, and the victories he won gave 
us national independence. His example of unselfish 
consecration,! and lofty patriotism made manifest, as 
in an open book, that those virtues were conditions 
not more vital to our nation's beginning than to its 
development and durability. His faith in God, and 
the fortitude of his faith, taught those for whom he 
wrought that the surest strength of nations comes 
from the support of God's almighty arm. His uni- 
versal and unaffected sympathy with those in every 
sphere of American life, his thorough knowledge of 



49 



50 Democracy Today 

existing American conditions, and his wonderful fore- 
sight of conditions yet to be, coupled with his power- 
ful influence in the councils of those who were to 
make or mar the fate of an infant nation, made him 
^ tremendous factor in the construction and adoption 
of the constitutional chart by which the course of the 
newly launched republic could be safely sailed. And 
it was he who first took the helm, and demonstrated, 
for the guidance of all who might succeed him, how 
•and in what spirit and intent the responsibilities of 
-our chief magistracy should be discharged. 

If your observance of this day were intended to 
make more secure the immortal fame of Washington, 
or to add to the strength and beauty of his imperish- 
able monument built upon a nation's affectionate 
remembrance, your purpose would be useless. Wash- 
ington has no need of you. But in every moment, 
from the time he drew his sword in the cause of 
American independence to this hour, living or dead, 
the American people have needed him. It is not 
important now, nor will it be in all the coming years, 
to remind our countrymen that Washington has lived, 
and that his achievements in his country's service 
are above all praise. But it is important — and more 
important now than ever before — that they should 
clearly apprehend and adequately value the virtues 
and ideals of which he was the embodiment, and that 
they should realize how essential to our safety and 
perpetuity are the consecration and patriotism which 
he exemplified. The American people need today the 
example and teachings of Washington no less than 






The Message of Washington 51 

those who fashioned our nation needed his labors and 
guidance; and only so far as we commemorate his 
birth with a sincere recognition of this need can our 
commemoration be useful to the present generation. 

It is, therefore, above all things, absolutely essential 
to an appropriately commemorative condition of 
nind that there should be no toleration of even the 
shade of a thought that what Washington did and 
said and wrote, in aid of the young American republic 
have become in the least outworn, or that in tnese 
later days of material advance and developmdut they 
may be merely pleasantly recalled with a sort of 
affectionate veneration, and w4th a kind of indulgent 
and loftily courteous concession of the value of 
Washington's example and precepts. These consti- 
tute the richest of all our crown jewels; and, if wo 
disregard them or depreciate their value, we shall be 
no better than "the base Indian who threw a pearl 
away richer than all his tribe. ' '^ 

They are full of stimulation to do grand and noble 
things, and full of lessons enjoining loyal adherenc3 
to public duty. But they teach nothing more impres- 
sive and nothing more needful by way of recalling 
our countrymen to a faith which has become some- 
what faint and obscured than the necessity to national 
beneficence and the people's happiness of the homely, 
simple, personal virtues that grow and thrive in the 
hearts of men who, with high intent, illustrate the 
goodness there is in human nature. 

Three months before his inauguration as first 
President of the republic which he had done so much 



52 Democracy Today 

to create, Wasnington wrote a letter to Lafayette,* 
his warm friend and revolutionary ally, in which he 
expressed his unremitting desire to establish a general 
system of policy which, if pursued, would ''ensure 
permanent felicity to the commonwealth"; and he 
added these words: 

"I think I see a path as clear and as direct as 8 
ray of light, which leads to the attainment of that 
object. Nothing but harmony, honesty, industry, and 
frugality is necessary to make us a great and happy 
people. Happily, the present posture of affairs, and 
the prevailing disposition of my countrymen promise 
to cooperate in establishing those four great and 
essential pillars of public felicity. ' ' 

It is impossible for us to be in accord with the 
spirit which should pervade this occasion if we fail 
to realize the momentous import of this declaration, 
and if we doubt its conclusiveness or its application 
to any stage of our national life, we are not in sym- 
pathy with a proper and improving observance of the 
birthday of George Washington. 

Such considerations as these suggest the thought 
that this is a time for honest self-examination. The 
question presses upon us with a demand for reply that 
will not be denied: 

Who among us all, if our hearts are purged of 
misleading impulses and our minds freed from per- 
verting pride, can be sure that today the posture of 
affairs and the prevailing disposition of our country- 
men cooperate in the establishment and promotion 
of harmony, honesty, industry, and frugality? 



The Message of Washington 53 

When Washington . wrote that nothing but these 
was necessary to make us a great and happy people^ 
he had in mind the harmony of American brotherhood 
and unenvious good will, the honesty that insures 
againsr the betrayal of public trust and hates devious 
ways and conscienceless practices, the industry that 
recognizes in faithful w^ork and intelligent endeavor 
abundant promise of well-earned competence and 
provident accumulation, and the frugality which out- 
laws waste and extravagant display as plunderers of 
thrift and promoters of covetous discontent. 

The self-examination invited by this day's com- 
memoration will be incomplete and superficial if we 
are not thereby forced to the confession that there 
are signs of the times which indicate a weakness and 
relaxation of our hold upon these saving virtues. 
When thus forewarned, it is the height of recreancy 
for us obstinately to close our eyes to the needs of the 
situation, and refuse admission to the thought that 
evil can overtake us. If we are to deserve security, 
and make good our claim to sensible, patriotic Amer- 
icanism, we will carefully and dutifully take our 
bearings, and discover, if Ave can, how far wind and 
tide have carried us away from safe waters. 

If we find that the wickedness of destructive agita- 
tors and the selfish depravity of demagogues have 
stirred up discontent and strife where there should 
be peace and harmony, and have arrayed against each 
other interests which should dwell together in hearty 
cooperation; if we find that the old standards of 
sturdy, uncompromising American honesty have 



54 Democracy Today 

become so corroded and weakened by a sordid atmos- 
phere that our people are hardly startled by crime 
in high places and shameful betrayals of trust every- 
where ; if we find a sadly prevalent disposition among 
us to turn from the highway of honorable industry 
into shorter crossroads leading to irresponsible and 
worthless ease; if we find that widespread wasteful- 
ness and extravagance have discredited the wholesome 
frugality which was once the pride of Americanism 
we should recall Washington's admonition that har- 
mony, industry, and frugality are "essential pillars 
of public felicity, ' ' and forthwith endeavor to change 
our course. 

To neglect this is not only to neglect the admonition 
of Washington, but to miss or neglect the conditions 
which our self-examination has made plain to us. 
These conditions demand something more from us 
than warmth and zest in the tribute we pay to Wash- 
ington, and something more even than acceptance of 
his teachings, however reverent our acceptance 
may be. 

The sooner w^e reach a state of mind which keeps 
constantly before us, as a living, active, impelling 
force, the truth that our people, good or bad, harmon- 
ious or with daggers drawn, honest or unscrupulous, 
industrious or idle, constitute the source of our 
nation's temperament and health, and that the traits 
and faults of our people must necessarily give quality 
and color to our national behavior, the sooner we shall 
appreciate the importance of protecting this source 
from unwholesome contamination. And the sooner 



The Message of Washmgton 55 

all of us honestly acknowledge this to be an individual 
duty that cannot be shifted or evaded, and the more 
thoroughly we purge ourselves from influences that , 
hinder its conscientious performance, the sooner will 
our country be regenerated and made secure by the 
saving power of good citizenship. 

It is our habit to affiliate with political parties. 
Happily, the strength and solidity of our institutions 
can safely withstand the utmost freedom and activity 
of political discussion so far as it involves the adop- 
tion of governmental policies or the enforcement of 
good administration. But they cannot withstand the 
frenzy of hate which seeks, under the guise of political 
earnestness, to blot out American brotherhood, and 
cunningly to persuade our people that a crusade of 
envy and malice is no more than a zealous insistence 
upon their manhood rights. 

Political parties are exceedingly human ; and they 
more easily fall before temptation than individuals, 
by so much as partisan success is the law of their 
life, and because their responsibility is impersonal. 
It is easily recalled that political organizations have 
been quite willing to utilize gusts of popular prejudice 
and resentment ; and I believe they have been known, 
as a matter of shrewd management, to encourage 
voters to hope for some measure of relief from 
economic abuses, and yet to ''stand pat" on the day 
appointed for realization. 

We have fallen upon a time when it behooves every 
thoughtful citizen, whose political beliefs are based 
on reason and who cares enough for his manliness 



56 Democracy Today 

and duty to save them from barter, to realize that the 
organization of the party of his choice needs watch- 
ing, and that at times it is not amiss critically to 
observe its direction and tendency. This certainly 
ought to result in our country 's gain ; and it is only 
partisan impudence that condemns a member of a 
political party who, on proper occasion, submits its 
conduct and the loyalty to i linciple of its leaders 
to a Court of Review, over wnich his conscience, his 
reason and his political understanding preside. 

I protest that I have not spoken in a spirit of 
pessimism. I have and enjoy my full share of the 
pride and exultation which our country's material 
advancement so fully justifies. Its limitless resources, 
its astonishing growth, its unapproachable industrial 
development, and its irrepressible inventive genius 
have made it the wonder of the centuries. Neverthe- 
less, these things do not complete the story of a people 
truly great. Our country is infinitely more than a 
domain affording to those who dwell upon it immense 
material advantages and opportunities. In such a 
country we live. But I love to think of a glorious 
nation built upon the will of free men, set apart for 
the propagation and cultivation of humanity's best 
ideal of a free government, and made ready for the 
growth and fruitage of the highest aspirations of 
patriotism. This is the country that lives in us. I 
indulge in no mere figure of speech when I say that 
our nation, the immortal spirit of our domain, lives 
in us — in our hearts and minds and consciences. 
There it must find its nutriment or die. This thought 



The Message of Washington 57 

more than any other presents to our minds the 
impressiveness and responsibility of American citizen- 
ship. The land we live in seems to be strong and 
active. But how fares the land that lives in us? Are 
we sure that we are doing all we ought to keep it in 
vigor and health ? Are we keeping its roots well sur- 
rounded by the fertile soil of loving allegiance, and 
are we furnishing them the invigorating moisture of 
unselfish fidelity? Are we as diligent as we ought 
to be to protect this precious growth against the 
poison that must arise from the decay of harmony 
and honesty and industry and frugality ; and are we 
sufficiently watchful against the deadly, burrowing 
pests of consuming greed and cankerous cupidity? 
Our answers to these questions make up the account 
of our stewardship as keepers of a sacred trust. 

The land we live in is safe as long as we are duti- 
fully careful of the land that lives in us. But good 
intentions and fine sentiments will not meet the 
emergency. If we would bestow upon the land that 
lives in us the care it needs, it is indispensable that 
we should recognize the weakness of our human 
nature, and our susceptibility to temptations and 
influences that interfere with a full conception of our 
obligations; and thereupon we should see to it that 
cupidity and selfishness do not blind our consciences 
or dull our efforts. 

From different points of view I have invited you 
to consider with me what obligations and responsibil- 
ities rest upon those who in this countiy of ours are 
I entitled to be called good citizens. The things I 



58 Democracy Today 

pointed out may be trite. I know I have spoken in 
the way of exhortation rather than with an attempt 
to say something new and striking. Perhaps you 
have suspected, what I am quite willing to confess, 
that, behind all that I have said, there is in my mind 
a sober conviction that we all can and ought to do 
more for the country that lives in us than it has been 
our habit to do; and that no better means to this 
end are at hand than a revival of pure patriotic affec- 
tion for our country for its own sake, and the accep- 
tance, as permanent occupants in our hearts and 
minds, of the virtues which Washington regarded as 
all that was necessary to make us a great and happy 
people, and which he declared to be **the great and 
essential pillars of public felicity" — harmony, hon- 
esty, industry, and frugality. 



OUR RESPONSIBILITIES AS A NATION 
Theodore Roosevelt 

[inaugural address delivered at WASHINGTON, 
MARCH 4, 1905] 

rsio people on earth have more cause to be thankful 
than ours, and this is said reverently, in no spirit of 
boastfulness in our own strength, but with gratitude 
to the Giver of Good, who has blessed us with the 
conditions which have enabled us to achieve so large 
a measure of well-being and of happiness. To us as 
a people it has been granted to lay the foundations 
of our national life in a new continent. We are the 
heirs of the ages, and yet we have had to pay few of 
the penalties which in old countries are exacted by the 
dead hand of a bygone civilization. We have not 
been obliged to fight for our existence against any 
alien race ; and yet our life has called for the vigor 
and effort without which the manlier and hardier 
virtues wither away. Under such conditions it would 
be our own fault if we failed ; and the success which 
we have had in the past, the success which we confi- 
dently believe the future will bring, should cause in 
us no feeling of vainglory, but rather a deep and 
abiding realization of all which life has offered us ; 
a full acknowledgment of the responsibility which is 
ours ; and a fixed determination to show that under a 
free government a mighty people can thrive best, 

59 



60 Democracy Today 

alike as regards the things of the body and the things 
of the soul. 

Much has been given to us, and much will right- 
fully be expected from us. "We have duties to others 
and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk neither. 
We have become a great nation, forced by the fact 
of its greatness into relations with the other nations 
of the earth ; and we must behave as beseems a people 
with such responsibilities. Toward all other nations, 
large and small, our attitude must be one of cordial 
and sincere friendship. We must show not only in 
our words but in our deeds that we are earnestly 
desirous of securing their good Vv^ill by acting toward 
them in a spirit of just and generous recognition of 
all their rights. But justice and generosity in a 
nation, as in an individual, count most when shown 
not by ^.he weak but by the strong. While ever careful 
to refrain from wronging others, we must be no less 
insistent that we are not wronged ourselves. We wish 
peace ; but we wish the peace of justice, the peace of 
righteousness. We wish it because we think it is right 
and not because we are afraid. No weak nation that 
acts manfully and justly should ever have cause to 
fear us, and no strong power should ever be able to 
single us out as a subject for insolent aggression. 

Our relations with the other Powers of the world 
are important ; but still more important are our rela- 
tions among ourselves. * Such growth in wealth, in 
population, and in power as this nation has seen 
during the century and a quarter of its national life 



Our Besponsibilities as a Nation 61 

is inevitably accompanied by a like growth in the 
problems which are ever before every nation that 
rises to greatness. Power invariably means both 
responsibility and danger. Our forefathers faced cer- 
tain perils which we have outgrown. We now face 
other perils, the very existence of which it was impos- 
sible that they should foresee. Modern life is both 
complex and intense, and the tremendous changes 
wrought by the extraordinary industrial development 
of the last half century are felt in every fiber of our 
social and political being. Never before have men 
tried so vast and formidable an experiment as that 
of administering the affairs of a continent under the 
form of a democratic republic. The conditions which 
have told for our mar\^elous material well-being, which 
have developed to a very high degree our energy, 
«elf-reliance, and individual initiative, have also 
brought the care and anxiety inseparable from the 
accumulation of great wealth in industrial centers. 
Upon the success of our experiment much depends; 
not only as regards our own welfare, but as regards 
the welfare of mankind. If we fail, the cause of free 
self-government throughout the world will rock to its 
foundations ; and therefore our responsibility is heavy, 
to ourselves, to the world as it is today, and to the 
generations yet unborn. . There is no good reason why 
we should fear the future but there is every reason 
why we should face it seriously, neither hiding from 
ourselves the gravity of the problems before us nor 
fearing to approach these problems with the unbend- 
ing, unflinching purpose to solve them aright. 



62 Democracy Today 

Yet, after all, though the problems are new, though 
the tasks set before us differ from the tasks set before 
our fathers who founded and preserved this Republic, 
the spirit in which these tasks must be undertaken 
and these problems faced, if our duty is to be well 
done, remains essentially unchanged. We know that 
self-government is difficult. We know that no people 
needs such high traits of character as that people 
which seeks to govern its affairs aright through 
the freely expressed will of the freemen who compose 
it. But we have faith that we shall not prove false 
to the memories of the men of the mighty past. They 
did their work, they left us the splendid heritage we 
now enjoy. We in our turn have an assured confidence 
that we shall be able to leave this heritage unwasted 
and enlarged to our children and our children's 
children. To do so we must show, not merely in great 
crises, but in the everyday affairs of life, the qualities 
of practical intelligence, of courage, of hardihood and 
endurance, and above all the power of devotion to a 
lofty ideal, which made great the men who founded 
this Republic in the days of \Vashington, which made 
great the men who preserved this Republic in the days 
of Abraham Lincoln. 



THE MEANING OP THE DECLARATION OP 
INDEPENDENCE 

WooDROw Wilson 

[delivered at independence hall, JULY 4, 1914] 

We are assembled to celebrate the one hundred and 
thirty-eighth anniversary of the birth of the United 
States. I suppose that we can more vividly realize the 
circumstances of that birth standing on this historic 
spot than it would be possible to realize them any- 
where else. The Declaration of Independence was 
written in Philadelphia ; it was adopted in this 
historic building by which we stand. I have just 
had the privilege of sitting in the chair of the great 
man who presided over the deliberations of those who 
gave the declaration to the world. ^ My hand rests at 
this moment upon the table upon which the declara- 
tion was signed. We can feel that we are almost in 
the visible and tangible presence of a great historic 
transaction. 

Have you ever read the Declaration of Independ- 
ence or attended with close comprehension to the real 
character of it when you have heard it read ? If you 
have, you will know that it is not a Pourth of July 
oration. The Declaration of Independence was a 
document preliminary to war. It was a vital piece of 
practical business, not a piece of rhetoric ; and if you 
will pass beyond those preliminary passages which 
we are accustomed to quote about the rights of men 

63 



64 Democracy Today 

and read into the heart of the document you will see 
that it is very express and detailed, that it consists 
of a series of definite specifications concerning" actual '^ 
public business of the day. Not the business of our 
day, for the matter with which it deals is past, but 
the business of that first revolution by which the 
Nation was set up, the business of 1776. Its general 
statements, its general declarations can not mean any- 
thing to us unless we append to it a similar specific 
body of particulars as to what we consider the essen- 
tial business of our own day. 

Liberty does not consist, my fellow citizens, in mere 
general declarations of the rights of man. It consists 
in the translation of those declarations into definite 
action. Therefore, standing here where the declara- 
tion was adopted, reading its businesslike sentences, 
we ought to ask ourselves what there is in it for us. 
There is nothing in it for us unless we can translate 
it into the terms of our own conditions and of our 
own lives. We must reduce it to what the lawyers 
call a bill of particulars. It contains a bill of partic- 
ulars, but the bill of particulars of 1776. If we would 
keep it alive, we must fill it with a bill of particulars 
of the year 1914. 

The task to which we have constantly to readdress 
ourselves is the task of proving that we are worthy 
of the men who drew this great declaration^ and know 
what they would have done in our circumstances. 
Patriotism consists in some ver}^ practical things — 
practical in that they belong to the life of every day, 
that tliey wear no extraordinary distinction about 
them, that they are connected with commonplace duty. 



Meaning of the Declaration of Independemce 65 

The way to be patriotic in America is not only to love 
America but to love the duty that lies nearest to our 
hand and know that in performing it we are serving 
our country'. There are some gentlemen i]i Washing- 
ton, for example, at this very moment who are show- 
ing themselves very patriotic in a way v/hich does 
not attract wide attention but seems to belong to 
mere everyday obligations. The Members of the 
House and Senate who stay in hot Washington to 
maintain a quorum of the Houses and transact the 
all-important business of the Nation are doing an act 
of patriotism. I honor them for it, and I am glad to 
stay there and stick by them until the work is done. 
It is patriotic, also, to learn what the facts of our 
national life are and to face them with candor. I 
have heard a great many facts stated about the present 
business condition*^ of this country, for example — a 
great many allegations of fact, at any rate, but the 
allegations do not tally with one another. And yet 1 
know that truth always matches with truth ; and when 
I find some insisting that everything is going wrong 
and others insisting that everything is going right, 
and when I know from a wide observation of the gen- 
eral circumstances of the country taken as a whole 
that things are going extremely well, I wonder what 
those who are crying out that things are wrong are 
trying to do. Are they trying to serve the country, or 
are they trying to serve something smaller than the 
countrj^ ? Are they trying to put hope into the hearts 
of the men who work and toil every day, or are they 
trying to plant discouragement and despair in those 



66 Democracy Today 

hearts? And why do they cry that everything is 
wrong and yet do nothing to set it right? If they 
love America and anything is wrong amongst us, it is 
their business to put their hand with ours to the task 
of setting it right. When the facts are known and 
acknowledged, the duty of all patriotic men is to 
accept them in candor and to address themselves hope- 
fully and confidently to the common counsel which is 
necessary to act upon them wisely and in universal 
concert. 

I have had some experiences in the last fourteen 
months which have not been entirely reassuring. It 
was universally admitted, for example, my fellow citi- 
zens, that the banking system of this country needed 
reorganization. We set the best minds that we could 
find to the task of discovering the best method of reor- 
ganization.^ But we met with hardly anything but 
criticism from the bankers of the country; we met 
with hardly anything but resistance from the major- 
ity of those at least who spoke at all concerning the 
matter. And yet so soon as that act was passed there 
was a universal chorus of applause, and the very men 
who had opposed the measure joined in that applause. 
If it was wrong the day before it was passed, why was 
it right the day after it was passed ? Where had been 
the candor of criticism not only, but the concert of 
counsel which makes legislative action vigorous and 
safe and successful ? 

It is not patriotic to concert measures against one 
another; it is patriotic to concert measures for one 
another. 



Meaning of the DeclaroMon of Independence 67 

i In one sense the Declaration of Independence has 
lost its significance. It has lost its significance a» 
a declaration of national independence. Nobody 
outside of America believed when it was uttered that 
we could make good our independence ; now no- 
body anjrwhere would dare to doubt that we are 
independent and can maintain our independence. As 
a declaration of independence, therefore, it is a mere 
historic document. Our independence is a fact so 
stupendous that it can be measured only by the size 
and energy and variety and wealth and power of 
one of the greatest nations in the world. But it is 
one thing to be independent and it is another thing 
to know what to do with your independence. It is 
one thing to come to your majority and another thing 
to know what you are going to do with your life and 
your energies; and one of the most serious questions 
for sober-minded men to address themselves to in the 
United States is this : What are we going to do with 
the influence and power of this great Nation? Are 
we going to play the old role of using that power for 
our aggrandizement and material benefit only? You 
know what that may mean. It may upon occasion 
mean that we shall use it to make the people of other 
nations suffer in the way in which we said it was intol - 
arable to suffer when we uttered our Declaration of 
Independence. 

The Department of State at Washington is con- 
stantly called upon to back up the commercial enter- 
I prises and the industrial enterprises of the United 
States in foreign countries, and it at one time went 



68 Democracy Today 

so far in that direction that all its diplomacy came 
to be designated as "dollar diplomacy." It was 
called upon to support every man who wanted to earn 
anything anywhere if he was an American. But there 
ought to be a limit to that. There is no man who is 
more interested than I am in carrying the enterprise 
of American business men to every quarter of the 
globe. I was interested in it long before I was sus- 
pected of being a politician. I have been preaching 
it year after year as the great thing that lay in the 
future for the United States, to show her wit and 
skill and enterprise and influence in every country in 
the world. But observe the limit to all that which 
is laid upon us perhaps more than upon any other 
nation in the world. We set this Nation up, at any 
rate we professed to set it up, to vindicate the rights 
of men. We did not name any differences between 
one race and another. We did not set up any barriers 
against any particular people. We opened our gates 
to all the world and said, "Let all men who wish to 
be free come to us and they will be welcome." We 
said, * ' This independence of ours is not a selfish thing 
for our own exclusive private use. It is for every- 
body to whom we can find the means of extending it. ' ' 
We can not with that oath taken in our youth, we 
can not with that great ideal set before us when we 
were a young people and numbered only a scant 
3,000,000, take upon ourselves, now that we are 100,- 
000,000 strong, any other conception of duty than we 
then entertained. If American enterprise in foreign 
countries, particularly in those foreign countries which 



Meaning of the Declaration of Independence 69 

are not strong enough to resist us, takes the shape of 
imposing upon and exploiting the mass of the people 
of that country it ought to be checked and not encour- 
aged. I am willing to get anything for an American 
that money and enterprise can obtain except the sup- 
pression of the rights of other men. I will not help 
any man buy a power which he ought not to exercise 
over his fellow beings.'^ 

You know, my fellow countrymen, what a big ques- 
tion there is in Mexico. Eighty-five per cent of the 
Mexican people have never been allowed to have any 
genuine participation in their own Government or to 
exercise any substantial rights with regard to the very 
land they live upon. All the rights that men most 
desire have been exercised by the other fifteen per 
cent. Do you suppose that that circumstance is not 
sometimes in my thought ? I know that the American 
people have a heart that will beat just as strong for 
those millions in Mexico as it will beat, or has beaten, 
for any other millions elsewhere in the world, and 
that when once they conceive what is at stake in Mex- 
ico they will know what ought to be done in Mexico. 
I hear a great deal said about the loss of property in 
Mexico and the loss of the lives of foreigners, and I 
deplore these things with all my heart. Undoubtedly, 
upon the conclusion of the present disturbed condi- 
tions in Mexico those who have been unjustly deprived 
of their property or in any wise unjustly put upon 
ought to be compensated. Men's individual rights 
have no doubt been invaded, and the invasion of those 
rights has been attended by many deplorable circum- 



70 Democracy Today 

stances which ought sometime, in the proper way, to 
be accounted for. But back of it all is the struggle 
of a people to come into its own, and while we look 
upon the incidents in the foreground let us not forget 
the great tragic reality in the background which 
towers above the whole picture. 

A patriotic American is a man who is not niggardly 
and selfish in the things that he enjoys that make for 
human liberty and the rights of man. He wants to 
«hare them with the whole world, and he is never so 
proud of the great flag under which he lives as when 
it comes to mean to other people as well as to him- 
self a symbol of hope and liberty. I would be ashamed 
of this flag if it did anything outside America that 
we would not permit it to do inside of America. 

The world is becoming more complicated every day, 
my fellow citizens. No man ought to be foolish enough 
to think that he understands it all. And, therefore, 
I am glad that there are some simple things in the 
world. One of the simple things is principle. Hon- 
esty is a perfectly simple thing. It is hard for me to 
believe that in most circumstances when a man has a 
•choice of ways he does not know which is the right 
way and v/hich is the wrong way. No man who has 
•chosen the wrong way ought even to come into Inde- 
pendence Square; it is holy ground which he ought 
not to tread upon. He ought not to come where 
immortal voices have uttered the great sentences of 
•sMch a document as this Declaration of Independence 
ii'>on which rests the liberty of a whole nation. 



Meaning of the Declaration of Independence 71 

And so I say that it is patriotic sometimes to prefer 
the honor of the country to its material interest. 
Would you rather be deemed by all the nations of the 
world incapable of keeping your treaty obligations 
in order that you might have free tolls for American 
ships P The treaty under which we gave up that right 
may have been a mistaken treaty, but there was na 
mistake about its meaning. 

When I have made a promise as a man I try to keep 
it, and I know of no other rule permissible to a nation. 
The most distinguished nation in the world is the 
nation that can and will keep its promises even to its 
own hurt. And I want to say parenthetically that I 
do not think anybody was hurt. I cannot be enthusi- 
astic for subsidies to a monopoly, but let those wha 
are enthusiastic for subsidies ask themselves whether 
they prefer subsidies to unsullied honor. 

The most patriotic man, ladies and gentlemen, is 
sometimes the man who goes in the direction that he 
thinks right even when he sees half the world against 
him. It is the dictate of patriotism to sacrifice yourself 
if you think that that is the path of honor and of duty. 
Do not blame others if they do not agree with you. 
Do not die with bitterness in your heart because you 
did not convince the rest of the world, but die happy 
because you believe that you tried to serve your coun- 
try by not selling your soul. Those were grim days,, 
the days of 1776. Those gentlemen did not attach 
their names to the Declaration of Independence on 
this table expecting a holiday on the next day, and 
that 4th of July was not itself a holiday. They at- 



72 Democracy Today 

tached their signatures to that significant document 
knowing that if they failed it was certain that every 
one of them would hang for the failure. They were 
committing treason in the interest of the liberty of 
3,000,000 people in America. All the rest of the world 
was against them and smiled with cynical incredulity 
at the audacious undertaking. Do you think that if 
they could see this great Nation now they would 
regret anything that they then did to draw the gaze 
of a hostile world upon them? Every idea must be 
started by somebody, and it is a lonely thing to start 
anything. Yet if it is in you, you must start it if 
you have a man's blood in you and if you love the 
country that you profess to be working for. 

I am sometimes very much interested when I see 
gentlemen supposing that popularity is the way to 
success in America. The way to success in this great 
country, with its fair judgments, is to show that you 
are not afraid of anybody except God and His final 
verdict. If I did not believe that, I would not believe 
in democracy. If I did not believe that, I would not 
believe that people can govern themselves. If I did not 
believe that the moral judgment would be the last 
judgment, the final judgment^ in the minds of men asj 
well as the tribunal of God, I could not believe ii 
popular government. But I do believe these things^ 
and, therefore, I earnestly believe in the democracy 
not only of America but of every awakened peoph 
that wishes and intends to govern and control its own 
affairs. 

It is very inspiring, my friends, to come to this 



Meaning of the Declaration of Independence 7S 

that may be called the original fountain of independ- 
ence and liberty in America and here drink draughts 
of patriotic feeling which seem to renew the very- 
blood in one's veins. Down in Washington some- 
times when the days are hot and the business presses 
intolerably and there are so many things to do that 
it does not seem possible to do anything in the way 
it ought to be done, it is always possible to lift one's 
thought above the task of the moment and, as it were, 
to realize that great thing of which we are all parts, 
the great body of American feeling and American 
principle. No man could do the work that has to be 
done in Washington if he allowed himself to be sepa- 
rated from that body of principle. He must make 
himself feel that he is a part of the people of the 
United States, that he is trying to think not only for 
them, but with them, and then he can not feel lonely. 
He not only can not feel lonely but he can not feel 
afraid of anything. 

My dream is that as the years go on and the world 
knows more and more of America it will also drink at 
these fountains of youth and renewal ; that it also will 
turn to America for those moral inspirations which lie 
at the basis of all freedom ; that the world will never 
fear America unless it feels that it is engaged in some 
enterprise which is inconsistent with the rights of 
humanity; and that America will come into the full 
light of the day when all shall know that she puts 
human rights above all other rights and that her flag 
is the flag not only of America but of humanity. 

What other great people has devoted itself to this 



74 Democracy Today 

exalted ideal ? To what other nation in the world can 
all eyes look for an instant sympathy that thrills the 
whole body politic when men anywhere are fighting 
for their rights? I do not know that there will ever 
be a declaration of independence and of grievances 
for mankind, but I believe that if any such document 
is ever drawn it will be drawn in the spirit of the 
American Declaration of Independence, and that 
America has lifted high the light which will shine unto 
all generations and guide the feet of mankind to the 
goal of justice and liberty and peace. 



THE AMERICAN OF FOREIGN BIRTH 
WooDROW Wilson 

[address delivered before a gathering op recently 

naturalized citizens at convention hall, 

philadelphia, may 10, 1915] 

Mr. Mayor, Fellow Citizens : It warms my heart 
that you should give me such a reception; but it is 
not of myself that I wish to think tonight, but of 
those who have just become citizens of the United 
States. 

This is the only country in the world which experi- 
ences this constant and repeated rebirth. Other coun- 
tries depend upon the multiplication of their own 
native people. This country is constantly drinking 
strength out of new sources by the voluntary associa- 
tion with it of great bodies of strong men and forward- 
looking women out of other lands. And so by the gift 
of the free will of independent people it is being con- 
stantly renewed from generation to generation by the 
same process by which it was originally created. It 
is as if humanity had determined to see to it that this 
great Nation, founded for the benefit of humanity, 
should not lack for the allegiance of the people of the 
world. 

You have just taken an oath of allegiance to the 
United States. Of allegiance to whom? Of allegi' 
ance to no one, unless it be God — certainly not of aUe^ 
giance to those who temporarily represent this great 

75 



76 Democmcy Today 

Government. You have taken an oath of allegiance 
to a great ideal, to a great body of principles, to a 
great hope of the human race. You have said, ''We 
are going to America not only to earn a living, not 
only to seek the things which it was more difficult to 
obtain where we were born, but to help forward the 
great enterprises of the human spirit — to let men 
know that everywhere in the world there are men who 
will cross strange oceans and go where a speech is 
spoken which is alien to them if they can but satisfy 
their quest for what their spirits crave ; knowing that 
whatever the speech there is but one longing and utter- 
ance of the human heart, and that is for liberty and 
justice." And while you bring all countries with 
you, you come with a purpose of leaving all other 
countries behind you — bringing what is best of their 
spirit, but not looking over your shoulders and seek- 
ing to perpetuate what you intended to leave behind 
in them. I certainly would not be one even to sug- 
gest that a man cease to love the home of his birth 
and the nation of his origin — these things are very 
sacred and ought not to be put out of our hearts — 
but it is one thing to love the place where you were 
born and it is another thing to dedicate yourself to 
the place to which you go. You can not dedicate 
yourself to America unless you become in every 
respect and with every purpose of your will thorough 
Americans. You can not become thorough Americans 
if you think of yourselves in groups. America does 
not consist of groups. A man who thinks of himself 
as belonging to a particular national group in America 



The American of Foreign Birth 11 

has not yet become an American, and the man who 
goes among you to trade upon your nationality is no 
worthy son to live under the Stars and Stripes. 

My urgent advice to you would be, not only always 
to think first of America, but always, also, to think 
first of humanity. You do not love humanity if you 
seek to divide humanity into jealous camps. Human- 
ity can be welded together only by love, by sympathy, 
by justice, not by jealousy and hatred. I am sorry 
for the man who seeks to make personal capital out 
of the passions of his fellow-men. He has lost the 
touch and ideal of America, for America was created 
to unite mankind by those passions which lift and not 
by the pas dons which separate and debase. We came 
to AmericH, either ourselves or in the persons of onr 
ancestors, to better the ideals of men, to make them 
see finer things than they had seen before, to get rid 
of the things that divide and to make sure of the 
things that unite. It, was but an historical accident 
no doubt that this great country was called the 
"United States"; yet I am very thankful that it has 
that word "United" in its title, and the man who 
seeks to divide man from man, group from group, 
interest from interest in this great Union is striking 
at its very heart. 

It is a very interesting circumstance to me, in think- 
ing of those of you who have just sworn allegiance 
to this great Government, that you were drawn across 
the ocean by some beckoning finger of hope, by some 
belief, by some vision of a new kind of justice, by 
some expectation ol a better kind of life. No doubt 



78 Democracy Today 

you have been disappointed in some of us. Some of 
us are very disappointing. No doubt you have found 
that justice in the United States goes only with a 
pure heart and a right purpose as it does everywhere 
else in the world. No doubt what you found here did 
not seem touched for you, after all, with the complete 
beauty of the ideal which you had conceived before- 
hand. But remember this: If we had grown at all 
poor in the ideal, you had brought some of it with you. 
A man does not go out to seek the thing that is not in 
him. A man does not hope for the thing that he does 
noj believe in, and if some of us have forgotten what 
America believed in, you, at any rate, imported in 
your own hearts a renewal of the belief. hat is the 
reason that I, for one, make you welcome. If I have 
in any degree forgotten what America was intended 
for, I will thank God if you will remind me. I was 
born in America. You dreamed dreams of what 
America was to be, and I hope you brought the dreams 
with you. No man that does not see visions will ever 
realize any high hope or undertake any high enter- 
prise. Just because you brought dreams with you, 
America is more likely to realize dreams such as you 
brought. You are enriching us if you came expect- 
ing us to be better than we arei 

See, my friends, what that means. It means that 
Americans must have a consciousness different from 
the consciousness of every other nation in the world. 
I am not saying this with even the slightest thought of 
criticism of other nations. You know how it is with 
a family. A family gets centered on itself if it is not 



( 



The American of Foreign Birth 79 

careful and is less interested in the neighbors than it 
is in its own members. So a nation that is not con- 
stantly renewed out of new sources is apt to have the 
narrowness and prejudice of a family; whereas, 
America must have this consciousness, that on all sides 
it touches elbows and touches hearts with all the 
nations of mankind. The example of America must 
be a special example. The example of America must 
be the example not merely of peace because it will not 
fight, but of peace because peace is the healing and 
elevating influence of the world and strife is not. 
There is such a thing as a man being too proud to 
fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so 
right that it does not need to convince others by force 
that it is right. 

You have come into this great Nation voluntarily 
seeking something that we have to give, and all that 
we have to give is this: We can not exempt yoa 
from work. No man is exempt from work anywhere 
in the world. We can not exempt you from the strife 
and the heartbreaking burden of the struggle of the 
day — that is common to mankind everyivhere ; we can 
not exempt you from the loads that you must carry. 
We can only make them light by the spirit in which 
they are carried. That is the spirit of hope, it is the 
spirit of liberty, it is the spirit of justice. 

When I was asked, therefore, by the Mayor and 
the committee that accompanied him to come up from 
Washington to meet this great company of newly ad- 
mitted citizens, I could not decline the invitation. I 
ought not to be away from Washington, and yet I feel 



80 Democracy Today 

that it has renewed my spirit as an American to be 
here. In Washington men tell you so many things 
every day that are not so, and I like to come and 
stand in the presence of a great body of my fellow- 
citizens, whether they have been my fellow-citizens 
a long time or a short time, and drink, as it were, out 
of the common fountains with them and go back feel- 
ing what you have so generously given me — the sense 
of your support and of the living vitality in your 
hearts of the great ideals which have made America 
the hope of the world. 



AMERICA FIRST 
WooDROw Wilson 

[address delivered before the daughters of the 

american revolution, washington, d. c, 

october 11, 1915 j 

Again it is my very great privilege to welcome you 
to the City of Washington and to the hospitalities of 
the Capital. May I admit a point of ignorance? I 
was surprised to learn that this association is so young, 
and that an association so young should devote itself 
wholly to memory I can not believe. For to me the 
duties to which you are con-secrated are more than the 
duties and the pride of memory. 

There is a very great thrill to be had from the 
memories of the American Revolution, but the Ameri- 
can Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation, 
and the duty laid upon us by that beginning is the 
duty of bringing the things then begun to a noble 
triumph of completion. For it seems to me that the 
peculiarity of patriotism in America is that it is not a 
mere sentiment. It is an active principle of conduct. 
It is something that was born into the world, not to 
please it but to regenerate it. It is something that 
was born into the world to replace systems that had 
preceded it and to bring men out upon a new plane 
of privilege. The glory of the men whose memories 
you honor and perpetuate is that they saw this vision, 
and it was a vision of the future. It was a vision of 

81 



82 Democracy Today 

great days to come when a little handful of three 
million people upon the borders of a single sea should 
have become a great multitude of free men and women 
spreading across a great continent, dominating the 
shores of two oeeans, and sending West as well as 
East the influences of individual freedom. These 
things were consciously in their minds as they framed 
the great Government which was born out of the 
American Revolution; and every time we gather to 
perpetuate their memories it is incumbent upon us 
that we should be worthy of recalling them and that 
we should endeavor by every means in our power to 
emulate their example. 

The American Revolution was the birth of a nation ; 
it was the creation of a great free republic based upon 
traditions of personal liberty which theretofore had 
been confined to a single little island, but which it was 
purposed should spread to all mankind. And the 
singular fascination of American history is that it 
has been a process of constant re-creation, of making 
over again in each generation the thing which was 
conceived at first. You know how peculiarly neces- 
sary that has been in our case, because America has 
not grown by the mere multiplication of the original 
stock. It is easy to preserve tradition with contimiity 
of blood; it is easy in a single family to remember 
the origins of the race and the purposes of its organ- 
ization; but it is not so easy when that race is con- 
stantly being renewed and augmented from other 
sources, from stocks that did not carry or originate 
the same principles. 



America First 83 

So from generation to generation strangers have 
had to be indoctrinated with the principles of the 
American family, and the wonder and the beauty of it 
all has been that the infection has been so generously 
easy. For the principles of liberty are united with 
the principles of hope. Every individual, as well as 
every Nation, wishes to realize the best thing that is 
in him, the best thing that can be conceived out of 
the materials of which his spirit is comstructed. It 
has happened in a way that fascinates the imagination 
that we have not only been augmented by additions 
from outside, but that we have been greatly stimulated 
by those additions. Living in the easy prosperity 
of a free people, knowing that the sun had always 
been free to shine upon us and prosper our under- 
takings, we did not realize how hard the task of liberty 
is and how rare the privilege of liberty is; but men 
were drawn out of every climate and out of every race 
because of an irresistible attraction of their spirits 
to the American ideal. They thought of America as 
lifting, like that great statue in the harbor of New 
York, a torch to light the pathway of men to the things 
that they desire, and men of all sorts and conditions 
struggled toward that light and came to our shores 
with an eager desire to realize it, and a hunger for it 
such as some of us no longer felt, for we were as if 
satiated and satisfied and were indulging ourselves 
after a fashion that did not belong to the ascetic de- 
votion of the early devotees of those great principles. 
Strangers came to remind us of what we had promised 
ourselves and through ourselves had promised man- 



84 Democracy Today 

kind. All men came to ns and said, '* Where is the 
bread of life with which you promised to feed us, and 
have you partaken of it yourselves ? ' ' For my part, I 
believe that the constant renewal of this people out of 
foreign stocks has been a constant source of reminder 
to this people of what the inducement was that was 
offered to men who would come and be of our number. 

Now we have come to a time of special stress and 
test. Thero never was a time when we needed more 
clearly to conserve the principles of our own patriot- 
ism than this present time. The rest of the world 
from which our polities were drawn seems for the 
time in the crucible and no man can predict what will 
come out of that crucible. We stand apart, unem- 
broiled, conscious of our own principles, conscious of 
what we hope and purpose, so far as our powers per- 
mit, for the world at large, and it is necessary that 
we should consolidate the American principle. Every 
political action, every social action, should have for 
its object in America at this time to challenge the 
spirit of America ; to ask that every man and woman 
who thinks first of America should rally to the stand- 
ards of our life. There have been some among us 
who have not thought first of America, who have 
thought to use the might of America in some matter 
not of America's origination. They have forgotten 
that the first duty of a nation is to express its own 
individual principles in the action of the family of 
nations and not to seek to aid and abet any rival or 
contrary ideal. 

Neutrality is a negative word. It is a word that 



America First 85 

does not express what America ought to feel. 
Ameriea has a heart and that heart throbs with 
all sorts of intense sympathies, but America 
has schooled its heart to love the things that 
America believes in and it ought to devote itself only 
to the things that America believes in; and, believ- 
ing that America stands apart in its ideals, it ought 
not to allow itself to be drawn, so far as its heart is 
concerned, into anybody's quarrel.^ Not because it 
does not understand the quarrel, not because it does 
not in its head assess the merits of the controversy, 
but because America has promised the world to stand 
apart and maintain certain principles of action which 
are grounded in law and in justice. We are not try- 
ing to keep out of trouble ; we are trying to preserve 
the foundations upon which peace can be rebuilt 
Peace can be rebuilt only upon the ancient and ac- 
cepted principles of international law, only upon those 
things which remind nations of their duties to each 
other, and, deeper than that, of their duties to man- 
kind and to humanity. 

America has a great cause which is not confined 
to the American continent. It is the cause of human- 
ity itself. I do not mean in anything that I say even 
to imply a judgment upon any nation or upon any 
policy, for my object here this afternoon is not to sit 
in judgment upon anybody but ourselves and to chal- 
lenge you to assist all of us who are trying to make 
America more than ever conscious of her own princi- 
ples and her own duty. I look forward to the neces- 
sity in every political agitation in the years which 



86 , Democracy Today 

are immediately at hand of calling upon every man 
to declare himself, where he stands. Is it America 
first or is it not? 

We ought to be very careful about some of the 
impressions that we are forming just now. There is 
too general an impression, I fear, that very large 
numbers of our fellow-citizens born in other lands 
have not entertained with sufficient intensity and af- 
fection the American ideal. But the number of such 
is, I am sure, not large. Those who would seek to 
represent them are very vocal, but they are not very 
influential. Some of the best stuff of America has 
come out of foreign lands, and some of the best stuff 
in America is in the men who are naturalized citizens 
of the United States. I would npt be afraid upon 
the test of ''America first" to take a census of all the 
foreign-born citizens of the United States, for I know 
that the vast majority of them came here because they 
believed in America ; and their belief in America has 
made them better citizens than some people who were 
born in America. They can say that they have bought 
this privilege with a great price. They have left 
their homes, they have left their kindred, they have 
broken all the nearest and dearest ties of human life 
in order to come to a new land, take a new rootage, 
begin a new life, and so by self-sacrifice express their 
confidence in a new principle ; whereas, it cost us none 
of these things. We were bom into this privilege; 
we were rocked and cradled in it ; we did nothing to 
create it ; and it is, therefore, the greater duty on our 
part to do a great deal to enhance it and preserve it. 



America First 87 

I am not deceived as to the balance of opinion among 
the foreign-bom citizens of the United States, but I 
am in a hurry for an opportunity to have a line-up 
and let the men who are thinking first of other coun- 
tries stand on one side and all those that are for 
America first, last, and all the time on the other side. 
Now, you can do a great deal in this direction. 
When I was a college officer I used to bo very much 
opposed to hazing; not because hazingr is not whole- 
some, but because sophomores are poor judges. I 
remember a very dear friend of mine, a professor of 
ethics on the other side of the water, was asked if he 
thought it was ever justifiable to tell a lie. He said 
Yes, he thought it was sometimes justifiable to lie; 
**but," he said, ''it is so difficult to judge of the justi- 
fication that I usually tell the truth." I think that 
ought to be the motto of the sophomore. There are 
freshmen who need to be hazed, but the need is to be 
judged by such nice tests that a sophomore is hardly 
old enough to determine them. But the world can 
determine them. We are not freshmen at college, 
but we are constantly hazed. I would a great deal 
rather be obliged to draw pepper up my nose than to 
observe the hostile glances of my neighbors. I would 
a great deal rather be beaten than ostracized. I would 
a great deal rather endure any sort of physical hard- 
ship if I might have the affection of my fellow-men. 
We constantly discipline our fellow-citizens by having 
an opinion about them. That is the sort of discipline 
we ought now to administer to everybody who is not 
to the very core of his heart an American. Just have 



88 Democracy Today 

an opinion about him and let him experience the at- 
mospheric effects of that opinion ! And I know of no 
body of persons comparable to a body of ladies for 
creating an atmosphere of opinion ! I have myself in 
part yielded to the influences of that atmosphere, 
though it took me a long time to determine how I was 
going to vote in New Jersey.^ 

So it has seemed to me that my privilege this after- 
noon was not merely a privilege of courtesy, but the 
real privilege of reminding you — for I am sure I am 
doing nothing more — of the great principles which we 
stand associated to promote. I for my part rejoice 
that we belong to a country in which the whole busi- 
ness of government is so difficult. We do not take 
orders from anybody ; it is a universal communication 
of conviction, the most subtle, delicate, and difficult 
of processes. There is not a single individual's opin- 
ion that is not of some consequence in making up the 
grand total, and to be in this great cooperative effort 
is the most stimulating thing in the world. A man 
standing alone may well misdoubt his own judgment. 
He may mistrust his own intellectual processes; he 
may even wonder if his own heart leads him right in 
matters of public conduct; but if he finds his heart 
part of the great throb of national life, there can be 
no doubt about it. If that is his happy circumstance, 
then he may know that he is part of one of the great 
forces of the world. 

I would not feel any exhilaration in belonging to 
America if I did not feel that she was something 
more than a rich and powerful nation. I should not 



America First 85 

feel proud to be in some respects and for a little while 
her spokesman if I did not believe that there was some- 
thing else than physical force behind her. I believe 
that the glory of America is that she is a great spirit- 
ual conception and that in the spirit of her institutions 
dwells not only her distinction but her power. The 
one thing that the world cannot permanently resist 
is the moral force of great and triumphant convictions. 



THE SCHOOL OF CITIZENSHIP 

WooDROw Wilson 

^ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE CITIZENSHIP CONVEN- 
TION, WILSON NORMAL SCHOOL BUILDING, 
WASHINGTON, D. C, JULY 13, 1916.] 

I have come here for the simple purpose of express- 
ing my very deep interest in what these conferences 
are intended to attain. It is not fair to the great 
multitudes of hopeful men and women who press into 
this country from other countries that we should leave 
them without that friendly and intimate instruction 
which will enable them very soon after they come to 
find out what America is like at heart and what 
America is intended for among the nations of the 
world. 

I believe that the chief school that these people must 
attend after they get here is the school which all of 
us attend, which is furnished by the life of the com- 
munities in which we live and the nation to which we 
belong. It has been a very touching thought to me 
sometimes to think of the hopes which have drawn 
these people to America. I have no doubt that many 
a simple soul has been thrilled by that great statue 
standing in the harbor of New York and seeming to 
lift the light of liberty for the guidance of the feet 
of men; and I can imagine that they have expected 
here something ideal in the treatment that they will 
receive, something ideal in the laws which they would 

90 



I'ke ISchool of Citizenship 91 

have to live under, and it has caused me many a time 
to turn upon myself the eye of examination to see 
whether there burned in me the true light of the 
American spirit which they expected to find here. It 
is easy, my fellow-citizens, to communicate physical 
lessons, but it is very difficult to communicate spiritual 
lessons. America was intended to be a spirit among 
the nations of the world, and it is the purpose of con- 
ferences like this to find out the best way to introduce 
the newcomers to this spirit, and by that very interest 
in them to enhance and purify in ourselves the thing 
that ought to make America great and not only ought 
to make her great, but ought to make her exhibit a 
spirit unlike any other nation in the world. 

I have never been among those who felt comfortable 
in boasting of the superiority of America over other 
countries. The way to cure yourself of that is to 
travel in other countries and find out how much of 
nobility and character and fine enterprise there is 
everywhere in the world. The most that America can 
hope to do is to show, it may be, the finest example, 
not the only example, of the things that ought to bene- 
fit and promote tjie progress of the world. 

So my interest in this movement is as much an in- 
terest in ourselves as in those whom we are trying to 
Americanize, because if we are genuine Americans 
they cannot avoid the infection ; whereas, if we are not 
genuine Americans, there will be nothing to infect 
them with, and no amount of teaching, no amount of 
exposition of the Constitution, — which I find very few 
persons understand, — no amount of dwelling upon the 



92 Democracy Today 

idea of liberty and of justice will accomplish the object 
we have in view, unless we ourselves illustrate the idea 
of justice and of liberty. My interest in this move- 
ment is, therefore, a two- fold interest. I believe it will 
assist us to become self-conscious in respect of the 
fundamental ideas of American life. When you ask 
a man to be loyal to a government, if he comes from 
some foreign countries, his idea is that he is expected 
to be loyal to a certain set of persons like a ruler or 
a body set in authority over him, but that is not the 
American idea. Our idea is that he is to be loyal 
to certain objects in life^ and that the only reason he 
has a President and a Congress and a Governor and a 
State Legislature and courts is that the community 
shall have instrumentalities by which to promote those 
objects. It is a cooperative organization expressing 
itself in this Constitution, expressing itself in these 
laws, intending to express itself in the exposition of 
those laws by the courts ; and the idea of America is 
not so much that men are to be restrained and pun- 
ished by the law as instructed and guided by the law. 
That is the reason so many hopeful reforms come to 
grief, A law cannot work until it expresses the spirit 
of the community for which it is enacted, and if you 
try to enact into law what expresses only the spirit 
of a small coterie or of a small minority, you know, 
or at any rate you ought to know, beforehand that it 
is not going to work. The object of the law is that 
there, written upon these pages, the citizen should 
read the record of the experience of this state and 
aation ; what they have concluded it is necessary for 



The School of Citizenship 93 

them to do because of the life they have lived and 
the things that they have discovered to be elements 
in that life. So that we ought to be careful to main- 
tain a government at which the immigrant can look 
with the closest scrutiny and to which he should be 
at liberty to address this question: ''You declare 
this to be a land of liberty and of equality and of 
justice ; have you made it so by your law ? ' ' We ought 
to be able in our schools, in our night schools, and in 
every other method of instructing these people, to 
show them that that has been our endeavor. We can- 
not conceal from them long the fact that we are just as 
human as any other nation, that we are just as selfish, 
that there are just as many mean people amongst us as 
anywhere else, that there are just as many people 
here who want to take advantage of other people as 
you can find in other countries, just as many cruel 
people, just as many people heartless when it comes 
to maintaining and promoting their own interest ; but 
you can show that our object is to get these people 
in harness and see to it that they do not do any 
damage and are not allowed to indulge the passions 
which would bring injustice and calamity at last upon 
a nation whose object is spiritual and not material. 

America has built up a great body of wealth. 
America has become, from the physical point of yiew, 
one of the most powerful nations in the world, a nation 
which if it took the pains to do so, could build that 
power up into one of the most formidable instruments 
in the world, one of the most formidable instruments 
of force, but which has no other idea than to use its 



94 Democracy Today 

force for ideal objects and not for self -aggrandize- 
ment. 

We have been disturbed recently, my fellow-citizens, 
by certain symptoms which have showed themselves 
in our body politic. Certain men, — I have never be- 
lieved a great number, — bom in other lands, have in 
recent months thought more of those lands than they 
have of the honor and interest of the government 
under which they are now living. They have even 
gone so far as to draw apart in spirit and in organiza- 
tion from the rest of us to accomplish some special 
object of their own.^ I am not here going to utter any 
criticism of these people, but I want to say this, that 
such a thing as that is absolutely incompatible with 
the fundamental idea of loyalty, and that loyalty is 
not a self-pleasing virtue. I am not bound to be loyal 
to the United States to please myself. I am bound to 
be loyal to the United States because I live under its 
laws and am its citizen, and whether it hurts me or 
whether it benefits me, I am obliged to be loyal. 
Loyalty means nothing unless it has at its heart the 
absolute principle of self-sacrifice. Loyalty means 
that you ought to be ready to sacrifice every interest 
that you have, and your life itself, if your country 
calls upon you to do so, and that is the sort of loyalty 
which ought to be inculcated into these newcomers, 
that they are not to be loyal only so long as they are 
pleased, but that, having once entered into this sacred 
relationship, they are bound to be loyal whether they 
are pleased or not ; and that loyalty which is merely 
self-pleasing is only self-indulgence and selfishness. 



The School of Citizenship 95 

No man has ever risen to the real stature of spiritual 
manhood until he has found that it is finer to serve 
somebody else than it is to serve himself. 

These are the conceptions which we ought to teach, 
the newcomers into our midst, and we ought to realize 
that the life of every one of us is part of the schooling, 
and that we cannot preach loyalty unless we set the 
example, that we cannot profess things with any in- 
fluence upon others unless we practice them also. 
This process of Americanization is going to be a pro- 
cess of self-examination, a process of purification, a 
process of rededication to the things which America 
represents and is proud to represent. And it takes 
a great deal more courage and steadfastness, my fel- 
low-citizens, to represent ideal things than to repre- 
sent anything else. It is easy to lose your temper, 
and hard to keep it. It is easy to strike and some- 
times very difiicult to refrain from striking, and I 
think you will agree with me that we are most justi- 
fied in being proud of doing the things that are hard 
to do and not the things that are easy. You do not 
settle things quickly by taking what seems to be the 
quickest way to settle them. You may make the com- 
plication just that much the more profound and in- 
extricable, and, therefore, what I believe America 
should exalt above everything else is the sovereignty 
of thoughtfulness and sympathy and vision as against 
the grosser impulses of mankind. No nation can live 
without vision, and no vision will exalt a nation except 
the vision of real liberty and real justice and purity 
of conduct. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
WooDROw Wilson 

[address delivered on the occasion of the ACCEPT' 

ANCE BY THE WAR DEPARTMENT OF THE GIFT TO 

THE NATION OF THE LINCOLN BIRTHPLACE 

FARM AT IIODGENVILLE, KENTUCKY, 

SEPTEMBER 4, 1916.] 

No more significant memorial could have been pre- 
sented to the nation than this. It expresses so much 
of what is singular and noteworthy in the history of 
the country ; it suggests so many of the things that we 
prize most highly in our life and in our system of 
government. How eloquent this little house within 
this shrine is of the vigor of democracy ! There is 
nowhere in the land any home so remote, so humble, 
that it may not contain the power of mind and heart 
and conscience to which nations yield and history sub- 
mits its processes. Nature pays no tribute to aristoc- 
racy, subscribes to no creed of caste, renders fealty to 
no monarch or master of any name or kind. Genius 
is no snob. It does not run after titles or seek by 
preference the high circles of society. It affects 
humble company as well as great. It pays no special 
tribute to universities or learned societies or conven- 
tional standards of greatness, but serenely chooses 
its own comrades, its own haunts, its own cradle even, 
and its own life of adventure and of training. Here 

96 



Abraham Lincoln ' 97 

Is proof of it. This little hut was the cradle of one 
of the great sons of men, a man of singular, delightful, 
vital genius who presently emerged upon the great 
stage of the nation 's history, gaunt, shy, ungainly, but 
dominant and majestic, a natural ruler of men, him- 
self inevitably the central figure of the great plot. No 
man can explain this, but every man can see how it 
demonstrates the vigor of democracy, where every 
door is open, in every hamlet and countryside, in city 
and wilderness alike, for the ruler to emerge when he 
will and claim his leadership in the free life. Such 
are the authentic proofs of the validity and vitality 
of democracy. 

Here, no less, hides the mystery of democracy. 
Who shall guess this secret of nature and providence 
and a free polity? Whatever the vigor and vitality 
of the stock from which he sprang, its mere vigor and 
soundness do not explain where this man got his great 
heart that seemed to comprehend all mankind in its 
catholic and beni^ant sympathy, the mind that sat 
enthroned behind those brooding, melancholy eyes, 
whose vision swept many an horizon which those about 
him dreamed not of, — that mind that comprehended 
what it had never seen, and understood the language 
of affairs with the ready ease of one to the manner 
born, — or that nature which seemed in its varied rich- 
ness to be the familiar of men of every way of life. 
This is the sacred mystery of democracy; that its 
richest fruits spring up out of soils which no man hr5 
prepared and in circumstances amidst which they ai^ 
the least expected. This is a place alike *>^ mystery 
and of reassurance. 



y8 Democracy Today 

It is likely that in a society ordered otherwise than 
our own Lincoln could not have found himself or the 
path of fame and power upon which he walked 
serenely to his death. In this place it is right that we 
should remind ourselves of the solid and striking facts 
upon which our faith in democracy is founded. Many 
another man besides Lincoln has served the nation in 
its highest places of counsel and of action whose 
origins were as humble as his. Though the greatest 
example of the universal energy, richness, stimulation, 
and force of democracy, he is only one example among 
many. The permeating and all-pervasive virtue of 
the freedom which challenges us in America to make 
the most of every gift and power we possess every 
page of our history serves to emphasize and illustrate. 
Standing here in this place, it seems almost the whole 
of the stirring story. 

Here Lincoln had his beginnings. Here the end 
and consummation of that great life seem remote and 
a bit incredible. And yet there was no break any- 
where between beginning and end, no lack of natural 
sequence anywhere. Nothing really incredible hap- 
pened. Lincoln was unaffectedly as much at home 
in the White House as he was here. Do you share 
with me the feeling, I wonder, that he was perma- 
nently at home nowhere? It seems to me that in the 
case of a man, — I would rather say of a spirit, — like 
Lincoln the question where he was is of little signifi- 
cance, that it is always what he was that really arrests 
our thought and takes hold of our imagination. It is 
the spirit always that is sovereign. Lincoln^ like the 



Abraham Lincoln yi^ 

rest of us, was put through the discipline of the 
world, — a very rough and exacting discipline for him, 
an indispensable discipline for every man who would 
know what he is about in the midst of the world's 
affairs ; but his spirit got only its schooling there. It 
did not derive its character or its vision from the 
experiences which brought it to its full revelation. 
The test of every American must always be, not where 
he is, but what he is. That, also, is of the essence of 
democracy, and is the moral of which this place is 
most gravely expressive. 

We would like to think of men like Lincoln and 
Washington as typical Amejricans, but no man can be 
typical who is so unusual as these great men were. 
It was typical of American life that it should produce 
such men with supreme indifference as to the manner 
in which it produced them, and as readily here in this 
hut as amidst the little circle of cultivated gentlemen 
to whom Virginia owed so much in leadership and 
example. And Lincoln and Washington were typical 
Americans in the use they made of their genius. But 
there will be few such men at best, and we will not 
look into the mystery of how and why they come. 
We will only keep the door open for them always, 
and a hearty welcome, — after we have recognized 
them. 

I have read many biographies of Lincoln ; I have 
sought out with the greatest interest the many inti- 
mate stories that are told of him, the narratives of 
nearby friends, the sketches at close quarters, in 
which those who had the privilege of being associated 



100 Democracy Today 

with him have tried to depict for ns the very man 
himself ''in his habit as he lived "^; but I have 
nowhere found a real intimate of Lincoln's. I 
nowhere get the impression in any narrative or rem- 
iniscence that the writer had in fact penetrated to the 
heart of his mystery, or that any man could penetrate 
to the heart of it. That brooding spirit had no real 
familiars. I get the impression that it never spoke 
out in complete self-revelation, and that it could not 
reveal itself completely to anyone. It was a very 
lonely spirit that looked out from underneath those 
shaggy brows and comprehended men without fully 
communing with them, as if, in spite of all its genial 
efforts at comradeship, it dwelt apart, saw its visions 
of duty where no man looked on. There is a very 
holy and very terrible isolation for the conscience of 
every man who seeks to read the destiny in affairs for 
others as well as for himself, for a nation as well as 
for individuals. That privacy no man can intrude 
upon. That lonely search of the spirit for the right 
perhaps no man can assist. This strange child of the 
cabin kept company with invisible things, was born 
into no intimacy but that of its own silently assemb 
ling and deploying thoughts. 

I have come here today, not to utter a eulogy o: 
Lincoln; he stands in need of none, but to endeavor 
to interpret the meaning of this gift to the nation of 
the place of his birth and origin. Is not this an altar 
upon which we may forever keep alive the vestal fire 
of democracy as upon a shrine at which some of the 
deepest and most sacred hopes of mankind may from 



)- 

A 



Abraham Lincoln 101 

age to age be rekindled? For these hopes must con- 
stantly be rekindled, and only those who live can 
rekindle them. The only stuff that can retain the 
life-giving heat is the stuff of living hearts. And the 
hopes of mankind cannot be kept alive by words 
merely, by constitutions and doctrines of right and 
codes of liberty. The object of democracy is to 
transmute these into the life and action of society, 
the self-denial and self-sacrifice of heroic men and 
women willing to make their lives an embodiment of 
right and service and enlightened purpose. The com- 
mands of democracy are as imperative as its privi- 
leges ^nd opportunities are wide and generous. Ita 
compulsion is upon us. It will be great and lift a 
great light for the guidance of the nations only if we 
are great and carry that light high for the guidance 
of our own feet. We are not w^orthy to stand here 
unless we ourselves be in deed and in truth real 
democrats and servants of mankind, ready to give 
our very lives for the freedom and justice and spir- 
itual exaltation of the great nation which shelters and 
nurtures us. 



A WORLD LEAGUE FOR PEACE^ 

WooDROw Wilson 

[address delivered before the senate of the united 
states, january 22, 1917.] 

On the 18th of December last I addressed an identic 
note to the Governments of the nations now at war, 
requesting them to state, more definitely than they 
had yet been stated by either group of belligerents, 
the terms upon which they would deem it possible to 
make peace. I spoke on behalf of humanity and of the 
rights of all neutral nations like our own, manv of 
whose most vital interests the war puts in constant 
jeopardy. 

The Central Powers united in a reply which stated 
merely that they were ready to meet their antagonists 
in conference to discuss terms of peace. 

The Entente Powers have replied much more defi- 
nitely and have stated, in general terms, indeed, but 
with sufficient definiteness to imply details, the 
arrangements, guarantees, and acts of reparation 
which they deem to be the indispensable conditions of 
a satisfactory settlement. 

We are that much nearer a definite discussion of the 
peace which shall end the present war. We are that 
much nearer the discussion of the international con- 
cert which must thereafter hold the world at peace. 

102 



A \Vorld Ltague J or rcace 103 

In every discussion of the peace that, must end thir 
war it is taken for granted that thril: peace must be 
followed by some definite concert of power which will 
make it virtually impossible that any such catastrophe 
should ever overwhelm us again. Every lover of man- 
kind, every sane and thoughtful man, must take that 
for granted. 

I have sought this opportunity to address you 
because I thought that I owed it to you, as the council 
associated with me in the final determination of our 
international obligations, to disclose to you, without 
reserve, the thought and purpose that have been 
taking form in my mind in regard to the duty of our 
Government in these days to come when it will be 
necessary to lay afresh and upon a new plan the foun- 
dations of peace among the nations. 

It is inconceivable that the people of the United 
States should play nu part in that great enterprise. 
To take part in such a service will be the opportunity 
for which they have sought to prepare themselves by 
the very principles and purposes of their polity and 
the approved practices of their Government, ever 
since the days when they set up a new nation in the 
high and honorable hope that it might in all that it 
was and did show mankind the way to liberty. 

They cannot, in honor, withhold the service to 
which they are now about to be challenged. They do 
not wish to withhold it. But they owe it to themselves 
and to the other nations of the world to state the con- 
ditions under which they will feel free to render it. 

That service is nothing less than this — to add their 



104 Democracy Today 

authority and their power to the authority and force 
of other nations to guarantee peace and justice 
throughout the world. Such a settlement cannot now 
be long postponed. It is right that before it comes 
this Government should frankly formulate the condi- 
tions upon which it would feel justified in asking our 
people to approve its formal and solemn adherence to 
a league for peace. I am here to attempt to state those 
conditions. 

The present war must first be ended ; but we owe it 
to candor and to a just regard for the opinion of man- 
kind to say that so far as our participation in guaran- 
tees of future peace is concerned it makes a great deal 
of difference in what way and upon what terms it is 
ended. 

The treaties and agreements which bring it to an 
end must embody terms which will create a peace that 
is worth guaranteeing and preserving, a peace that 
w^ill win the approval of mankind ; not merely a peace 
that will serve the several interests and immediate 
aims of the nations engaged. 

We shall have no voice in determining what those 
terms shall be, but we shall, I feel sure, have a voice 
in determining whether they shall be made lasting or 
not by the guarantees of a univereal covenant, and 
our judgment upon what is fundamental and essen- 
tial as a condition precedent to permanency should be 
spoken now, not afterward, when it may be too late. 

No covenant of cooperative peace that does not 
include the peoples of the New World can sufficf^ to 
keep the future safe against war, and yet there is only 



A World League for Peace 105 

one sort of peace that the peoples of America could 
join in guaranteeing. 

The elements of that peace must be elements that 
engage the confidence and satisfy the principles of the 
American Governments, elements consistent with their 
political faith and the practical convictions which the 
peoples of America have once for all embraced and 
undertaken to defend. 

I do not mean to say that any American Govern- 
ment would throw any obstacle in the way of any 
terms of peace the Governments now at war might 
agree upon, or seek to upset them when made, what- 
ever they might be. I only take it for granted that 
mere terms of peace between the belligerents will not 
satisfy even the belligerents themselves.^ 

Mere agreements may not make peace secure. It 
will be absolutely necessary that a force be created as 
a guarantor of the permanency of the settlement so 
much greater than the force of any nation now 
engaged in any alliance hitherto formed or projected 
that no nation, no probable combination of nations, 
could face or withstand it. 

If the peace presently to be made is to endure it 
must be a peace made secure by the organized major 
force of mankind. 

The terms of the immediate peace agreed upon will 
determine whether it is a peace for which such a guar- 
antee can be secured. The question upon which the 
whole future peace and policy of the world depends is 
this: 



106 Democracy Today 

Is the present war a struggle for a just and secu. 
peace or only for a new balance of power? If it be 
only a struggle for a new balance of power,^ who will 
guarantee, who can guarantee, the stable equilibrium 
of the new arrangement ? 

Only a tranquil Europe can 'be a stable Europe. 
There must be not only a balance of power, but a 
community of power ; not organized rivalries, but an 
organized common peace. 

Fortunately, we have received very explicit assur- 
ances on this point. The statesmen of both of the 
groups of nations now arrayed against one another 
have said, in terms that could not be misinterpreted, 
that it was no part of the purpose they had in mind 
to crush their antagonists. But the implications of 
these assurances may not be equally clear to all — may 
not be the same on both sides of the water, I think 
it will be serviceable if I attempt to set forth what 
we understand them to be. 

They imply, first of all, that it must be a peace 
without victory. It is not pleasant to say this. I 
beg that I may be permitted to put my own interpre- 
tation upon it and that it may be understood that no 
other interpretation was in my tliought.* 

I am seeking only to face realities and to face them 
without soft concealments. Victory would mean 
peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed 
upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humil- 
iation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifien, and ■; 
would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory, | 



I 



A World League for Peace 107 

upon which terms of peace would rest, not per- 
manently, but only as upon quicksand. 

Only a peace between equals can last ; only a peace 
the very principle of which is equality and a common 
participation in a common benefit. The right state of 
mind, the right feeling between nations, is as neces- 
sary for a lasting peace as is the just settlement of 
questions of territory or of racial and national alle- 
giance. 

The equality of nations upon which peace must be 
founded, if it is to last, must be an equality of rights ; 
the guarantees exchanged must neither recognize nor 
imply a difference between big nations and small, be- 
tween those that are powerful and those that are weak.^ 

Right must be based upon the common strength, 
not upon the individual strength, of the nations upon 
whose concert peace will depend. 

Equality of territory or of resources there, of 
course, cannot be ; nor any other sort of equality not 
gained in the ordinary peaceful and legitimate devel- 
opment of the peoples themselves. But no one asks 
or expects any thing more than an equality of rights. 
Mankind is looking now for freedom of life, not for 
equipoises of power. 

And there is a deeper thing involved than even 
equality of rights among organized nations. No 
peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recog- 
nize and accept the principle that Governments derive 
all their just powers from the consent of the gov- 
erned,^ and that no right anywhere exists to hand 



108 Democracy Today 

people about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if 
they were property. 

I take it for granted, for instance, if I may venture 
upon a single example, that statesmen everywhere are 
agreed that there should be a united, independent, 
and autonomous Poland, and that henceforth invio- 
lable security of life, of worship, and of industrial 
and social development should be guaranteed to all 
peoples who have lived hitherto under the power of 
Governments devoted to a faith and purpose hostile 
to their own. 

I speak of this, not because of any desire to exalt 
an abstract political principle which has always been 
held very dear by those who have sought to build up 
liberty in America, but for the same reason that I have 
spoken of the other conditions of peace which seem 
to me clearly indispensable — ^because I wish frankly 
oO uncover realities. 

Any peace which does not recognize and accept 
this principle will inevitably be upset. It will not 
rest upon the affections or the convictions of mankind. 
The ferment of spirit of whole populations will fight 
subtly and constantly against it, and all the world 
will sympathize. The world can be at peace only if 
its life is stable, and there can be no stability where 
the will is in rebellion, where there is not tranquillity ^ 
of spirit and a sense of justice, of freedom, and of 
right. 

So far as practicable, moreover, every great people 
now struggling toward a full development of its re- '\ 
sources and of its powers should be assured a direct 



A World League for Peace 109 

outlet to the great highways of the sea. Where this 
cannot be done by the cession of territory, it can no 
doubt be done by the neutralization of direct rights 
of way under the general guarantee which will assure 
the peace itself. With a right comity of arrangement 
no nation need be shut away from free access to the 
open paths of the world's commerce. 

And the paths of the sea must alike in law and in 
fact be free. The freedom of the seas is the sine qua 
nan of peace, equality, and cooperation.'^ 

No doubt a somewhat radical reconsideration of 
many of the rules of international practice hitherto 
sought to be established may be necessary in order to 
make the seas indeed free and common in practically 
all circumstances for the use of mankind, but the 
motive for such changes is convincing and compelling. 
There can be no trust or intimacy between the peoples 
of the world without them. 

The free, constant, unthreatened intercourse of 
nations is an essential part of the process of peace and 
of development. It need not be difficult to define or 
to secure the freedom of the seas if the Governments 
of the world sincerely desire to come to an agreement 
concerning it. 

It is a problem closely connected with the limita- 
tion of naval armaments and the cooperation of the 
navies of the world in keeping the seas at once free 
and safe. And the question of limiting naval arma- 
ments opens the wider and perhaps more difficult 
question of the limitation of armies and of all pro- 
grams of military preparation. 



110 J-j^mocracy Today 

Difficult and delicate as these questions are, they 
must be faced with the utmost candor and decided in 
a spirit of real accommodation if peace is to come 
with healing in its wings and come to stay. Peace 
cannot be had without concession and sacrifice. There 
can be no sense of safety and equality among the na- 
tions if great preponderating armies are henceforth 
to continue here and there to be built up and main- 
tained. 

The statesmen of the world must plan for peace, 
and nations must adjust and accommodate their policy 
to it as they have planned for war and made ready 
for pitiless contest and rivalry. The question of arm- 
aments, whether on land or sea, is the most immedi- 
ately and intensely practical question connected with 
the future fortunes of nations and of mankind. 

I have spoken upon these great matters without 
reserve and with the utmost explicitness because it has 
seemed to me to be necessary if the world's yearning 
desire for peace was anywhere to find free voice and 
utterance. Perhaps I am the only person in high 
authority among all the peoples of the world who is at 
liberty to speak and hold nothing back. 

I am speaking as an individual, and yet I am speak- 
ing also, of course, as the responsible head of a great 
Government, and I feel confident that I have said 
what the people of the United States would wish me to 
say. May I not add that I hope and believe that I 
am in effect speaking for liberals and friends of 
humanity in every nation and of every program of 
liberty? 



A World League for Peace 111 

I would fain believe that I am speaking for the 
silent mass of mankind everywhere who have as yet 
iiad no place or opportunity to speak their real hearts 
out concerning the death and ruin they see to have 
come already upon the persons and the homes they 
hold most dear. 

And in holding out the expectation that the people 
and Government of the United States will join the 
other civilized nations of the world in guaranteeing 
the permanence of jjeace upon such terms as I have 
named, I speak with the greater boldness and confi- 
dence because it is clear to every man who can think 
that there is in this promise no breach in either our 
traditions or our policy as a nation, but a fulfilment; 
rather, of all that we have professed or striven for. 

I am proposing, as it were, that the nations should 
with one accord adopt the doctrine of President Mon- 
roe as the doctrine of the world f that no nation 
should seek to extend its policy over any other nation 
or people, but that every people should be left free to 
determine its own policy, its own way of development, 
unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along 
with the great and powerful. 

I am proposing that all nations henceforth avoid 
entangling alliances which would draw them into com- 
petitions of power, catch them in a net of intrigue 
and selfish rivalry, and disturb their own affairs with 
influences intruded from without. There is no en- 
tangling alliance in a concert of power. When all 
unite to act in the same, sense and with the same pur- 
pose, all act in the common interest and are free to 



112 Democracy Today 

live tlieir own lives under a common protection. 

I am proposing government by the consent of the 
governed; that freedom of the seas which in inter- 
national conference after conference representatives 
of the United States have urged with the eloquence 
of those who are the convinced disciples of liberty; 
and that moderation of armaments which makes of 
armies and navies a power for order merely, not an 
instrument of aggression or of selfish violence. 

These are American principles, American policies. 
"We can stand for no others. And they are also the 
principles and policies of forward-looking men and 
women everywhere, of every modern nation, of every 
enlightened community. They are the principles of 
mankind, and must prevail.^ 



MESSAGE TO CONGRESS 
WooDROw Wilson 

[delivered before congress FEBRUARY 3, 1917, ON THE 

OCCASION OF SEVERING DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS 

WITH GERMANY.] 

The Imperial German Government, on the 31st of 
January, announced to this Government and to the 
Governments of the other neutral nations that on 
and after the first day of February, the present month, 
it would adopt a policy with regard to the use of sub- 
marines against all shipping seeking to pass through 
certain designated areas of the high seas to which it 
is clearly my duty to call your attention. 

Let me remind the Congress that on the 18th of 
April last, in view of the sinking on the 24th of March 
of the cross-Channel passenger-steamer Sussex by a 
German submarine, without summons or warning, and 
the consequent loss of the lives of several citizens of 
the United States who were passengers aboard her, 
this Government addressed a note to the Imperial 
German Government in which it made the following 
declaration : 

If it is still the purpose of the Imperial German Government 
to prosecute relentless and indiscriminate warfare against ves- 
sels of commerce by the use of submarines without regard to 
what the Government of the United States must consider the 
sacred and indisputable rules of international law and the uui- 

113 



114 Democracy Today 

/ersally recognized dictates of humanity, the Government of the 
United States is at last forced to the conclusion that there ia 
but one course it can pursue. Unless the German Government 
jhould now immediately declare and effect an abandonment of 
its present methods of submarine warfare against passenger and 
freight-carrying vessels the Government of the United Statea 
can have no choice but to sever diplomatic relations with the 
Jerman Empire altogether. 

In reply to this declaration the G-erman Govern- 
ment gave this Government the following assurances : 

TIhe German Government is prepared to do its utmost' to con- 
fine the operations of war for the rest of its duration to the 
fighting forces of the belligerents, thereby insuring the freedom 
of the seas, a principle upon which the German Government 
believes, now as before, to be in agreement with the Government 
of the United States. 

The German Government, guided by this idea, notifies the 
Government of the United States that the German naval forces 
have received the following orders: 

In accordance with the general principles of visit and search 
and destruction of merchant vessels recognized by international 
law, such vessels, both within and without the area declared as 
naval war zone, shall not be sunk without warning and without 
saving hum.an lives, unless thesef ships attempt to escape or 
offer resistance. 

But neutrals cannot expect that Germany, forced to fight for 
her existence, shall, for the sake of neutral interest, restrict the 
use of an effective weapon if her enemy is permitted to con- 
tinue to apply at will methods of warfare violating the rules of 
international law. Such a demand would be incompatible with 
the character of neutrality, and the German Government is con- 
vinced that the Government of the United States does not think 
of making such a demand, knowing that the Government of the 
United States has repeatedly declared that it is determined to 
restore the principle of the freedom of the seas from whatever 
'v'arter it has been violated. 



Message to Congress 115 

To this the Government of the United States replied 
on the 8th of May, aceeptinj?, of course, the assur- 
ances given, but adding : 

The Government of the United States feels it necessary to 
state that it takes it for granted that the Imperial German 
Government does not intend to imply that the maintenance of 
its newly announced policy is in any way contingent upon the 
course or result of diplomatic negotiations between the Govern- 
ment of the United States and an^ other belligerent Govern- 
ment, notwithstanding the fact th u certain passages in the 
Imperial Government 's note of the th instant might appear to 
be susceptible to that construction. In order, however, to avoid 
any possible misunderstanding, the Government of the United 
States notifies the Imperial Government that it cannot for a 
moment entertain, much less discuss, a suggestion that respect 
by German naval authorities for the rights of citizens of the 
United States upon the high seas should in any way or in the 
slightest degree be made contingent upon the conduct of any 
other Government affecting the rights of neutrals and non- 
combatants. Responsibility in such matters is single, not joint; 
absolute, not relative. 

To this note of the 8th of May the Imperial Ger- 
man Government made no reply. 

On the 31st of January, the Wednesday of the 
present week, the German Ambassador handed to the 
Secretary of State, along with a formal note, a mem- 
orandum which contains the following statement : 

The Imperial Government, therefore, does not doubt thai the 
Government of the United States will understand the situation 
thus forced upon Germany by the Entente Allies ' brutal methods 
of war and by their determination to destroy the Central Powers, 
and that the Government of the United States will further 
realize that the now openly disclosed intentions of the Entente 
A-llies give back to Germany the freedom of action which she 



116 Democracy Today 

reserved in her note addressed to the Grovermnent of the United 

States on May 4, 1916. 

Under these eircumstancos Germany will meet the illegal 
measures of her enemies by forcibly preventing after February 1, 
1917, in a zone around Great Britain, France, Italy, and in the 
eastern Mediterranean all navigation, that of neutrals included, 
from and to France, etc. All ships met within the zone will be 
sunk. 

I think that you will agree with me that, in view 
of this declaration, wh: ^,h suddenly and without prior 
intimation of any kin \ deliberately withdraws the 
solemn assurance given in the Imperial Government's 
note of the 4th of May, 1916, this Government has no 
alternative consistent with the dignity and honor of 
the United States but to take the course which, in its 
note of the 18th of April, 1916, it announced that it 
would take in the event that the German Government 
did not declare and effect ' an abandonment of the 
methods of submarine warfare which it was then em- 
ploying and to which it now purposes again to resort. 

I have, therefore, directed the Secretary of State 
to announce to his Excellency the German ambassa- 
dor that all diplomatic relations between the United 
States and the German Empire are severed, and that 
the American ambassador at Berlin will immediately 
be withdrawn, and, in accordance with this decision, 
to hand to his Excellency his passports. 

Notwithstanding this unexpected action of the Ger- 
man Government, this sudden and deeply deplorable 
renunciation of its assurances, given this Government 
at one of the most critical moments of tension in the 
relations of the two Governments, I refuse to believe 



Message to Congress 117 

that it is the intention of the German authorities to 
do in fact what they have warned us they will feel 
at liberty to do. I cannot bring myself to believe 
that they will indeed pay no regard to the ancient 
friendship between their people and our own or to 
the solemn obligations which have been exchanged 
between them and destroy American ships and take 
the lives of American citizens in the wilful prosecu- 
tion of the ruthless naval program they have 
announced their intention to adopt. 

Only actual overt acts on tneir part can make me 
believe it even now. 

If this inveterate confidence on my part in the so- 
briety and prudent foresight of their purpose should, 
unhappily prove unfounded, if American ships and 
American lives should, in fact, be sacrified by their 
naval commanders in heedless contravention of t»he 
just and reasonable understandings of international 
law and the obvious dictates of humanity, I shall take 
the liberty of coming again before the Congress to ask 
that authority be given me to use any means that may 
be necessary for the protection of our seamen and 
our people in the prosecution of their peaceful and 
legitimate errands on the high seas. I can do nothing 
less. I take it for granted that all neutral .Govern- 
ments will take the same course. 

I do not desire any hostile conflict with the Imperial 
German Government. We are the sincere friends oi 
the German people and earnestly desire to remair 
at peace with the Government which speaks for thenb 
We shall not believe that they are hostile to us unti' 



118 Democracy Today 

we are obliged to believe it; and we purpose nothing 
more than the reasonable defense of the undoubted 
rights of our people. We wish to serve no selfish ends. 
We seek merely to stand true alike in thought and 
in action to the immemorial principles of cur people 
which I sought to express in my address to the Senate 
only two weeks ago — seek merely to vindicate our 
right to liberty and justice and an unmolested life. 
These are bases of peace, not war. God grant we may 
not be challenged to defend them by acts of wilful 
injustice on the part of the Government of Germany. 



REQUEST FOR A GRANT OF POWER 
WooDROW Wilson 

[MESSxiGE TO THE CONGRESS, FEBRUARY 26, 1917.] 

I have again asked the privilege of addressing you 
because we are moving through critical times, during 
which it seems to me to be my duty to keep in close 
touch with the Houses of Congress so that neither 
counsel nor action shall run at cross-purposes be- 
tween us. 

On the 3d of February I officially informed you 
of the sudden and unexpected action of the Imperial 
German Government in declaring its intention to 
disregard the promises it had made to this Govern- 
ment in April last and undertake immediate subma- 
rine operations against all commerce, whether of bel- 
ligerents or of neutrals, that should seek to approach 
Great Britain and Ireland, the Atlantic coasts of 
Europe, or the harbors of the eastern Mediterranean, 
and to conduct those operations without regard to the 
established restrictions of international practice, with- 
out regard to any considerations of humanity, even, 
which might interfere with their object. 

That policy was forthwith put into practice. It 
has now been in active exhibition for nearly four 
weeks. Its practical results are not fully disclosed. 
The commerce of other neutral nations is suffering 
severely, but not, perhaps, very much more severely 

119 . 



120 Democracy Today 

than it was already suffering before the 1st of Febru- 
ary, when the new policy of the Imperial Government 
was put into operation. 

We have asked the cooperation of the other 
neutral Governments to prevent these depredations, 
but I fear none of them has thought it wise to join us 
in any common course of action. Our own commerce 
has suffered, is suffering, rather in apprehension than 
in fact, rather because so many of our ships are 
timidly keeping to their home ports than because 
American ships have been sunk. 

Two American vessels have been sunk, the Housa- 
tonic and the Lyman M. Law. The case of the Hous- 
atonic, which was carrying foodstuffs consigned to a 
London firm, was essentially like the case of the Frye, 
in which, it will be recalled, the German Government 
admitted its liability for damages, and the lives of 
the ciew, as in the case of the Frye, were safeguarded 
with reasonable care. 

The case of the Law, which was carrying lemon-box 
staves to Palermo, disclosed a ruthlessness of method 
which deserves grave condemnation, but was accom- 
panied by no circumstances which might not have 
been expected at any time in connection with the use 
of the submarine against merchantmen as the Ger- 
man Government has used it. 

In sum, therefore, the situation we find ourselves 
in with regard to the actual conduct of the German 
submarine warfare against commerce and its effects 
upon our own ships and people is substantially the 
same that it was when I addressed you on the 3d of 



Request for Grant of Power 121 

February, except for the tying up of our shipping in 
our own ports because of the unwillingness of our 
ship-owners to risk their vessels at sea without insur- 
ance or adequate protection, and the very serious 
congestion of our commerce which has resulted, a con- 
gestion which is growing rapidly more and more 
serious every day. 

This in itself might presently accomplish, in effect, 
what the new German submarine orders were meant 
to accomplish, so far as we are concerned. We can 
only say, therefore, that the overt act which I have 
ventured to hope the' German commanders would in 
fact avoid has not occurred. 

But while this is happily true, it must be admitted 
that there have been certain additional indications 
and expressions of purpose on the part of the German 
press and the German authorities which have increased 
rather than lessened the impression that if our ships 
and our people are spared it will be because of fortu- 
nate circumstances or because the commanders of the 
German submarines which they may happen to 
encounter exercise an unexpected discretion and 
restraint, rather than because of the instructions 
under which those commanders are acting. 

It would be foolish to deny that the situation is 
fraught with the gravest possibilities and dangers. 
No thoughtful man can fail to see that the necessity 
for definite action may come at any time, if we are 
in fact, and not in word merely, to defend our ele- 
mentary rights as a neutral nation. It would be most 
imprudent to be unprepared. 



122 Democracy Today 

I cannot in such circumstances be unmindful of the 
fact that the expiration of the term of the present 
Congress is immediately at hand by constitutional lim- 
itation, and that it would in all likelihood require an 
unusual length of time to assemble and organize the 
Congress which is to succeed it. 

I feel that I ought, in view of that fact, to obtain 
from you full and immediate assurance of the author- 
ity which I may need at any moment to exercise. No 
doubt I already possess that authority without special 
warrant of law by the plain implication of my con- 
stitutional duties and powers, but I prefer in the 
present circumstances not to act upon general impli- 
cation. I wish to feel that the authority and the 
power of the Congress are behind me in whatever it 
may become necessary for me to do. We are jointly 
the servants of the people and must act together and 
in their spirit, so far as we can divine and interpret it. 

No one doubts what it is our duty to do. We must 
defend our commerce and the lives of our people in 
the midst of the present trying circumstances with 
discretion, but with clear and steadfast purpose. 
Only the method and the extent remain to be chosen 
upon the occasion, if occasion should indeed arise. 

Sipce it has unhappily proved impossible to sale- 
guard our neutral rights by diplomatic means against 
the unwarranted infringements they are suffering at 
the hands of Germany, there may be no recourse but 
to armed neutrality, which we shall know how to 
maintain and for which there is abundant American 
precedent. 



Request for Grant of Power 121^ 

It is devoutly to be hoped that it will not be neces- 
sary to put armed forces anywhere into action. The 
American people do not desire it, and our desire is 
not different from theirs. I am sure that they 
will understand the spirit in which I am now acting, 
the purpose I hold nearest my heart, and would wish 
to exhibit in everything I do. I am anxious that the 
people of the nations at war also should understand 
and not mistrust us. 

I hope that I need give no further proofs and assur- 
ances than I have already given throughout nearly 
three years of anxious patience that I am the friend 
of peace, and mean to preserve it for America so long 
as I am able. 

I am not now proposing or contemplating war, 
or any steps that lead to it. I merely request that 
you will accord me by your own vote and definite 
bestowal the means and the authority to safeguard in 
practice the right of a great people, who are at peace 
and who are desirous of exercising none but the rights 
of peace, to follow the pursuit of peace in quietness 
and good-will — rights recognized time out of mind 
by all the civilized nations of the world. 

No course of my choosing or of theirs will lead to 
war. War can come only by the wilful acts and ag- 
gressions of others. 

You will understand why I can make no definite 
proposals or forecasts of action now, and must ask 
for your supporting authority in the most general 
terms. The form in which action may become nec- 
essary cannot vet be foreseen. I believe that the 



124 Democracy Today 

people will be willing to trust me to act with restraint, 
with prudence, and in the true spirit of amity and 
good faith that they have themselves displayed 
throughout these trying months; and it is in that 
belief that I request that you will authorize me to 
supply our merchant-ships with defensive arms should 
that become necessary, and with the means of using 
them, and to employ any other instrumentalities or 
methods that may be necessary and adequate to pro- 
tect our ships and our people in their legitimate and 
peaceful pursuits of the seas. 

I request also that you will grant me at the same 
time, along with the powers I ask, a sufficient credit 
to enable me to provide adequate means of protection 
where they are lacking, including adequate insurance 
against the present war risks. 

I have spoken of our commerce and of the legitimate 
errands of our people on the seas, but you will not 
be misled as to my main thought, the thought that lies 
beneath these phrases and gives them dignity and 
weight. 

It is not of material interest merely that we are 
thinking. It is, rather, of fundamental human rights, 
chief of all the right of life itself. I am thinking not 
only of the rights of Americans to go and come 
about their proper business by way of the sea, but 
also of something much deeper, miich more funda- 
mental than that. I am thinking of those rights of 
humanity without which there is no civilization. My 
theme is of those great principles of compassion and 
of protection which mankind has sought to throw 



Bequest for Grant of Power 125 

about human lives — the lives of non-combatants, the 
lives of men who are peacefully at work keeping the 
industrial processes of the world quick and vital, the 
lives of women and children, and of those who supply 
the labor which ministers to their sustenance. 

We are speaking of no selfish material rights, but 
of rights which our hearts support, and whose found- 
ation is that righteous passion for justice upon which 
all law, all structures alike of family, of state, and of 
mankind must rest, and upon the ultimate base of 
our existence and our liberty. I cannot imagine any 
man with American principles at his heart hesitating 
to defend these things. 



WAR MESSAGE 
WooDROw Wilson 

(address delivered before congress, APRIL 2, 1917.] 

I have called the Congress into extraordinary ses- 
don because there are serious, very serious, choices of 
policy to be made, and made immediately, which it 
was neither right nor constitutionally permissible^ 
that I should assume the responsibility of making. 

On the 3d of February last I officially laid before 
you the extraordinary announcement of the Imperial 
German. Government that on and after the first day of 
February it was its purpose to put aside all re- 
straints of law or of humanity and use its submarines 
to sink every vessel that sought to approach either the 
ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the western 
coasts of Europe or any of the ports controlled by the 
enemies of Germany within the Mediterranean.^ That 
had seemed to be the object of the German submarine 
warfare earlier in the war, but since April of last year 
the Imperial Government had somewhat restrained 
the commanders of its undersea craft in conformity 
with its promise then given to us^ that passenger-boats 
should not be sunk, and that due warning would be 
given to all other vessels which its submarines might 
seek to destroy where no resistance was offered or 
escape attempted, and care taken that their crews 

126 



War Message 127 

were given at least a fair chance to save their lives in 
their open boats. 

The precautions taken were meager and haphazard 
enough, as was proved in distressing instance after 
instance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly 
business, but a certain degree of restraint was ob- 
served.* 

The new policy has swept every restriction aside, 
Vessels of every kind, whatever their flag, their char- 
acter, their cargo, their destination, their errand, have 
been ruthlessly sent to the bottom without warning, 
and without thought of help or mercy for those on 
board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those 
of belligerents. Even hospital-ships and ships carry- 
ing relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people 
of Belgium,'^ though the latter were provided with 
safe conduct through the proscribed areas by the Ger- 
man Government itself and were distinguished by un- 
mistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with the 
same reckless lack of compassion or of principle. 

I was for a little while unable to believe that such 
things would, in fact, be done by any Government 
that had hitherto subscribed to the humane practices 
of civilized nations. International law had its origin 
in the attempt to set up some law which would be 
respected and observed upon the seas, where no nation 
had right of dominion, and where lay the free high- 
ways of the world. By painful stage after stage has 
that law been built up with meager enough results, 
indeed, after all was accomplished that could be ac' 
complished, but always with a clear view at least oi 



128 Democracy Today 

what the heart and conscience of mankind demanded. 

This minimum of right the German Government 
has swept aside under the plea of retaliation and 
necessity, and because it had no weapons which it 
could use at sea except these, which it is impossible 
to employ as it is employing them without throwing 
to the winds all scruples of humanity or of respect 
for the understandings that were supposed to underlie 
the intercourse of the world. 

I am not now thinking of the loss jl property in- 
volved, immense and serious as that is, but only of the 
wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of non- 
conibatants, men, women, and children engaged in 
pursuits which have alw^ays, even in the darkest 
periods of modern history,*^ been deemed innocent and 
legitimate. 

Property can be paid for ; the lives of peaceful and 
innocent people cannot be. 

The present German warfare against commerce is 
a warfare against mankind. It is a war against all 
nations. American ships have been sunk,*^ American 
lives taken,^ in ways which it has stirred us very deeply 
to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral 
and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed 
in the waters in the same way. There has been no dis- 
crimination. The challenge is to all mankind. Each 
nation must decide for itself how it will meet it.^ The 
choice we make for ourselves must be made with a 
moderation of counsel and a temperateness of judg- 
ment befitting our character and our motives as a 
Nation. We must put excited feeling away. 



War Message 129 

Our motive will not be revenge or tli<; victorious 
assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only 
the vindication of right, of human right, of which we 
are only a single champion. 

When I addressed the Congress on the 26th of 
February last I thought that it would suffice to assert 
our neutral rights with arms, our right to use the seas 
against unlawful interference, our right to keep our 
people safe against unlawful violence. But armed 
neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable. Because 
submarines are in effect outlaws when used as the 
German submarines have been used against merchant 
shipping, it is impossible to defend ships against their 
attacks as the law of nations has assumed that mer- 
chantmen would defend themselves against privateers 
or cruisers, visible craft giving chase upon the open 
sea. 

It is common prudence in such circumstances, grim 
necessity, indeed, to endeavor to destroy them before 
they have shown their own intention. They must be 
dealt with upon sight, if deal^ with at all. 

The German Government denies the right of neu- 
trals to use arms at all within the areas of the sea 
which it has proscribed, even in the defense of rights 
which no modem publicist has ever before questioned 
their right to defend. The intimation is conveyed 
that the armed guards which we have placed on our 
merchant-ships will be treated as beyond the pale of 
law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be. 

Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best; 
in such circumstances and in the face of such pre- 



130 Democracy Today 

tensions it is worse than ineffectual ; it is likely to pro- 
duce what it was meant to prevent; it is practically 
certain to draw us into the war without either the 
rights or the effectiveness of belligerents. 

There is one choice we cannot make, we are inca- 
pable of making : we will not choose the path of sub- 
mission and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation 
and our people to be ignored or violated.^^ The wrongs 
against which we now array ourselves are not com- 
mon wrongs; they reach out to the very roots of 
human life. 

With a profound sense of the solemn and even 
tragical character of the step I am taking and of the 
grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhes- 
itating obedience to what I deem my constitutional 
duty, I advise that the Congress declare the recent 
course of the Imperial German Government to be in 
fact nothing less than war against the Government 
and people of the United States.^^ That it formally 
accept the status of belligerent which has thus been 
thrust upon it and that it take immediate steps not 
only to put the country in a more thorough state of 
defense, but also to exert all its power and employ 
all its resources to bring the Government of the Ger- 
man Empire to terms and end the war. 

What this will involve is clear. It will involve the 
utmost practicable cooperation in counsel and action 
with the Governments now at war with Germany, and 
as incident to that the extension to those Governments 
of the most liberal financial credits in order that our 
resources may so far as possible be added to theirs. 



War Message 131 

It will involve the organization and mobilization of 
all the material resources of the country to supply 
the materials of war and serve the incidental needs of 
the nation in the most abundant and yet the most 
economical and efficient way possible. 

It will involve the immediate full equipment of the 
navy in all respects, but particularly in supplying it 
with the best mean^ of dealing with the enemy's sub- 
marines. 

It will involve the immediate addition to the armed 
forces of the United States already provided for by 
law in case of war at least 500,000 men, who should, 
in my opinion, be chosen upon the principle of uni- 
; versal liability to service, and also the authorization 
of subsequent additional increments of equal force 
I so soon as they may be needed and can be handled 
in training. 

It will involve also, of course, the granting of ade- 
quate credits to the Government, sustained, I hope, 
so far as they can equitably be sustained by the pres- 
ent generation, by well-conceived taxation. I say sus- 
tained so far as may be equitable by taxation because 
it seems to me that it would be most unwise to base 
the credits which will now be necessary entirely on 
money borrowed. 

It is our duty, I most respectfully urge, to protect 
our people so far as we may against the very serious 
hardships and evils which would be likely to arise out 
of the inflation, which would be produced by vast 
loans. 



132 Democracy Today 

In carrying out the measures by which these things 
are to be accomplished we should keep constantly in 
mind the wisdom of interfering as little as possible in 
our own preparation and in the equipment of our own 
military forces with the duty — for it will be a very 
practical duty — ^of supplying the nations already at 
war with Germany with the materials which they can 
obtain only from us or by our assistance. They are in 
the field and we should help them in every way to be 
effective there.^^ ^1 

I shall take the liberty of suggesting, through the 
several executive departments of the Government, for 
the consideration of your committees measures for 
the accomplishment of the several objects I have men- 
tioned. I hope that it will be your pleasure to deal 
with them as having been framed after very careful 
thought by the branch of the Government upon which 
the responsibility of conducting the war and safe- 
guarding the nation will most directly fall. 

While we do these things, these deeply momentous 
things, let us be very clear and make very clear to 
all the worl4 what our motives and our objects are. 
My own thought has not been driven from its habitual 
and normal course by the unhappy events of the last 
two months, and I do not believe that the thought of 
the nation has been altered or clouded by them. 

I have exactly the same thing in mind now that I 
had in mind when I addressed the Senate on the 22d 
of January last ; the same that I had in mind when I 
addressed the Congress on the 3d of February and on 
the 26th of February. 



War Message 133 

Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the princi- 
ples of peace and the justice in the life of the world 
as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up 
amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of 
the world such a concert of purpose and of action as 
will henceforth insure the observance of those prin- 
ciples. 

Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where 
the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of 
its peoples, and the menace to that peace and free- 
dom lies in the existence of autocratic Governments^^ 
backed by organized force which is controlled wholly 
by their will, not by the will of their people. We 
have seen the last of neutrality in such circumstances. 

We are at the beginning of an age in which it will 
be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of 
responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among 
aations and their Governments that are observed 
among the individual citizens of civilized states. 

We have no quarrel with the German people. We 
have no feeling toward them but one of sympathy and 
friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their 
Government acted in entering this war.^^ It was not 
with their previous knowledge or approval.^^ 

It was a war determined upon as wars used to be 
determined upon in the old, unhappy days when 
peoples were nowhere consulted by their rulers and 
wars were provoked and waged in the interest of 
dynasties^^ or little groups of ambitious men who were 
accustomed to use their fellow-men as pawns and tools. 
\ 



£34 Democracy Today 

Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbor 
states with spies or set the course of intrigue to bring 
about some critical posture of affairs which will give 
them an opportunity to strike and make conquest.-^'^ 
Such designs can be successfully worked only under 
cover and where no one has the right to ask questions. 

Cunningly contrived plans of deception or aggres- 
sion, carried, it may be, from generation to genera- 
tion, can be worked out and kept from the light only 
within the privacy of courts or behind the carefully 
guarded confidences of a narrow and privileged class. 
They are happily impossible where public opinion 
commands and insists upon full information concern- 
ing all the nation's affairs. 

A steadfast concert for peace can never be main- 
tained except by a partnership of democratic nations. 
No autocratic Government could be trusted to keep 
faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be 
a league of honor, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue 
would eat its vitals away, the plottings of innt^r 
circles who could plan what they would and render 
account to no one would be a corruption seated at its 
very heart. Only free peoples can hold their purpose 
and their honor steady to a common end and prefer 
the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of 
their own.^^ | 

Does not every American feel that assurance has 
been added to our hope for the future peace of the 
world by the wonderful and heartening things that 
have been happening within the last few weeks in 
Rnsp.ia? | 

i 



War Message 135- 

Russia was known by those who know it best to have 
been always in fact democratic at heart, in all the 
vital habits of her thought, in all the intimate relation- 
ships of her people that spoke their natural instinct, 
their habitual attitude toward life. 

Autocracy that crowned the summit of her political 
structure, long as it had stood and terrible as was the- 
reality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin, 
in character or purpose ;^^ and now it has been shaken 
off and the great, generous Russian people have been 
added, in all their native majesty and might, to the 
forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for 
justice and for peace. Here is a fit partner for a 
League of Honor. 

One of the things that have served to convince us 
that the Prussian autocracy was not and could never 
be our friend is that from the very outset of the pres- 
ent war it has filled our unsuspecting communities 
and even our offices of Government with spies and set 
criminal intrigues everywhere afoot against our na- 
tional unity of council, our peace within and without, 
our industries and our commerce. ^^ 

Indeed, it is now evident that its spies were here 
even before the war began, and it is, unhappily, not 
a matter of conjecture, but a fact proved in our courts 
of justice, that the intrigues which have more than 
once come perilously near to disturbing the peace 
and dislocating the industries of the country have 
been carried on at the instigation, with the support,^ 
and even under the personal direction, of official 



136 Democracy Today I 

agents of the Imperial German Government accred 
Ited to the Government of the United States. 

Even in checking these things and trying to extir- 
pate them we have sought to put the most generous 
interpretation possible upon them because we knew 
that their source lay, not in any hostile feeling or pur- 
pose of the German people toward us (who were, no 
doubt, as ignorant of them as we ourselves were), 
but only in the selfish designs of a Government that 
did what it pleased and told its people nothing. 
But they have played their part in serving to con- 
vince us at last that that Government entertains no 
real friendship for us and means to act against our 
peace and security at its convenience.^^ That it means 
to stir up enemies against us at our very doors the 
intercepted note to the German Minister at Mexico 
City is eloquent evidence.^^ 

We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose 
because we know that in such a Government, follow- 
ing such methods, we can never have a friend; and 
that in the presence of its organized power, always 
lying in wait to accomplish we know not what pur- 
pose, there can be no assured security for the demo- 
cratic Governments of the world.^^ 

"We are now about to accept the gage of battle with 
this natural foe to liberty, and shall, if necessary, 
spend the whole force of the nation to check and nul- 
lify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, now 
that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense 
about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of 
the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the 



War Message 137 

German people included; for the rights of nations 
great and small and the privilege of men everywhere 
to choose their way of life and of obedience. The 
world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace 
must be planted upon the trusted foundations of polit- 
ical liberty. 

We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no 
conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for 
ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices 
we shall freely make. We are but one of the cham- 
pions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied 
when those rights have been made as secure as the 
faith and the freedom of nations can make them. 

Just because we fight without rancor and without 
selfish objects, seeking nothing for ourselves but what 
we shall wish to share with all free peoples, we shall, 
I feel confident, conduct our operations as belliger- 
ents without passion and ourselves observe with proud 
punctilio the principles of right and of fair play we 
profess to be fighting for.^^ 

I have said nothing of the Governments allied with 
the Imperial Government of Germany because they 
have not made war upon us or challenged us to defend 
our right and our honor. 

The Austro-Hungarian Government has indeed 
avowed its unqualified indorsement and acceptance of 
the reckless and lawless submarine warfare^^ adopted 
now without disguise by the Imperial German Govern- 
ment, and it has therefore not been possible for this 
Government to receive Count Tarnowski, the ambas- 
sador recently accredited to this Government by the 



138 Democrat y Today 

Imperial and Royal Government of Austro-Hungary j 
but that Government has not actually engaged in 
warfare against citizens of the United States on the 
seas, and I take the liberty, for the present at least, 
of postponing a discussion of our relations with the 
authorities at Vienna. 

We enter this war only where we are clearly forced 
into it because there are no other means of defending 
our rights. 

It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves 
as belligerents in a high spirit of right and fairness 
because we act without animus, not in enmity toward 
a people or with the desire to bring any injury or dis- 
advantage upon them, but only in armed opposition 
to an irresponsible Government which has thrown 
aside all considerations of humanity and of right 
and is running amuck. 

We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the 
German people, and shall dejvire nothing so much as 
the early re-establishment ot intimate relations of 
mutual advantage between us, h^iwever hard it may be 
for them, for the time being, tc believe that this is 
spoken from our hearts. We hare borne with their 
present Government through all these bitter months 
because of that friendship, — exercisiLg a patience and 
forbearance which would otherwise have been impos- 
sible.26 

We shall, happily, still have an opportunity to 
prove that friendship in our daily attitude and actions 
towards the millions of men and women of German 
birth and native sympathy who live amongst us and 



War Messago 139 

share our life, and we shall be proud to prove it to- 
ward all who are, in fact, loyal to their neighbors 
and to the Government in the hour of test. They are, 
most of them, as true and loyal Americans as if they 
had never known any other fealty or allegiance. 
They will be prompt to stand with us in rebuking and 
restraining the few who may be of a different mind 
and purpose. If there should be disloyalty it will 
be dealt with with a firm hand of stern repression j^^ 
but, if it lifts its head at all, it will lift it only here 
and there and without countenance except from a law- 
less and malignant few. 

It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gentlemen 
of the Congress, which I have performed in thus ad- 
dressing you. There are, it may be, many months of 
fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful 
thing to lead this great, peaceful people into war, into 
the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civiliza- 
tion itself seeming to be in the balance. But the 
right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight 
for the things which we have always carried nearest 
our hearts^^ — for democracy, for the right of those 
who submit to authority to have a voice in their own 
governments, for the rights and liberties of small 
nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a 
concert of free peoples us shall bring peace and safety 
to all nations and make the world itself at last free. 

To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our for- 
tunes, everything that we are and everything that we 
have, with the pride of those who know that the day 
has come when America is privileged to spend her 



140 Democracy Today 

blooj and her might for the principles that gave her 
birtli and happiness and the peace which she has 
treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.^^ 



FLAG DAY ADDRESS 
WooiiROw Wilson 

[address delivered at WASHINGTON, D. C, ON FLAG 
DAY, JUNE 14, 1917.] 

We meet to celebrate Flag Day because this flag 
wliicli we honor and under which we serve is the 
emblem of our unity, our power, our thought and 
purpose as a nation. It has no other character than 
that which we give it from generation to generation. 
The choices are ours. It floats in majestic silence 
above the hosts that execute those choices, whether 
in peace or in war. And yet, though silent, it speaks 
to us, — speaks to us of the past, of the men and 
women who went before us and of the records they 
wrote upon it. We celebrate the day of its birth ; and 
from its birth until now it has witnessed a great his- 
tory, has floated on high the symbol of great events, 
of a great plan of life worked out by a great people. 
We are about to carry it into battle, to lift it where 
it will draw the fire of our enemies. We are about 
to bid thousands, hundreds of thousands, it may be 
millions, of our men, the young, the strong, the 
capable men of the nation, to go forth and die 
beneath it on fields oif blood far away, — for what? 
For some unaccustomed thing? For something for 
which it has never sought the fire before? Amer* 
lean armies were never before sent across the seas 

141 



142 Democracy Today 

Why are they sent now? For some new purpose, 
for which this great flag has never been earried 
before, or for some old, familiar, heroic purpose for 
which it has seen men, its own men, die on every 
battlefield upon which Am ricans have borne arms 
since the Revolution? 

These are questions which must be answered. We 
are Americans, We in our turn serve America, and 
can serve her with no private purpose. We must 
use her flag as she has always used it. We are ac- 
countable at the bar of history and must plead in 
atter frankness what purpose it is we seek to serve. 

It is plain enough how we were forced into the 
war. The extraordinary insults and aggressions of 
the Imperial German Government left us no self- 
respecting choice but to take up arms in defense of 
our rights as a free people and of our honor as a 
sovereign government. The military masters of 
Germany denied us the right to be neutral. They 
filled our unsuspecting communities with vicious 
spies and conspirators and sought to corrupt the 
opinion of our people in their own behalf. When 
they found that they could not do that, their agents 
diligently spread sedition amongst us and sought to 
draw our own citizens from their allegiance, — and 
some of those agents were men connected with the 
official Embassy of the German Government itself 
here in our own Capital.^ They sought by violence 
to destroy our industries and arrest our commerce.^ 
They tried to incite Mexico to take up arms against 
us and to draw Japan into a hostile alliance with 



Flag Day Address 143 

her, — and that, not by indirection, but by direct 
suggestion from the Foreign Office in Berlin.^ They 
impudently denied us the use of the high seas and 
repeatedly executed their threat that they would 
send to their death any of our people who ventured 
to approach the coasts of Europe.^ And many of 
our own people were corrupted.^ Men began to look 
upon their own neighbors with suspicion and to 
wonder in their hot resentment and surprise whether 
there was any community in which hostile intrigue 
did not lurk. What great nation in such circum- 
stances would not have taken up arms? Much as 
we had desired peace, it was denied us, and not of 
our own choice. This flag under which we serve 
would have been dishonored had we withheld our 
hand. 

But that is only part of the story. We know 
now as clearly as we knew before we were our- 
selves engaged that we are not the enemies of the 
German people and that they are not our enemies. 
They did not originate or desire this hideous war 
or wish that we should be drawn into it; and we 
are vaguely conscious that we are fighting their 
cause, as they will some day see it, as well as our 
own.^ They are themselves in the grip of the same 
sinister power that has now at last stretched its 
ugly talons out and drawn blood from us.*^ The 
whole wbrld is at war because the whole world is 
in the grip of that power and is trying out the 
great battle which shall determine whether it is to 
be brought under its mastery or fling itself free. 



144 Democracy Today 

The war was begun by the military 'masters of 
Germany, who proved to be also the masters of 
Austria-Hnngary. These men have never regarded 
aations as peoples, men, women, and children of 
like blood and frame as themselves, for whom gov- 
ernments existed and in whom governments had 
their life. They have regarded them merely as serv- 
iceable organizations which they could by force or 
intrigue bend or corrupt to their ^own purpose. 
They have regarded the smaller states, in particular, 
and the peoples who could be overwhelmed by force, 
as their natural tools and instruments of domina- 
tion.^ Their purpose has long been avowed. The 
statesmen of other nations, to whom that purpose 
was incredible,^ paid little attention; regarded what 
German professors expounded in their classrooms 
and German writers set forth to the world as the 
goal of German policy as rather the dream of minds 
detached from practical affairs, as preposterous pri- 
vate conceptions of German destiny, than as the 
actual plans of responsible rulers; but the rulers of 
Germany themselves knew all the while what con- 
crete plans, what well advanced intrigues lay back 
of what the professors and the writers were saying, 
and were glad to go forward unmolested,^*^ filling the 
thrones of Balkan states with German princes,^^ put- 
ting German officers at the service of Turkey to drill 
her armies^^ and make interest with her govern- 
ment, developing plans of sedition and rebellion in 
India and Egypt, setting their fires in Persia.^^ The 
demands made by Austria upon Servia were a mere 



Flag Day Address 145 

single step^* in a plan which compassed Europe and 
Asia, from Berlin to Bagdad.^^ They hoped those 
demands might not arouse Europe, but they meant 
to press them whether they did or not, for they 
thought themselves ready for the final issue of arms. 
Their plan was to throw a broad belt of German 
military power and political control across the very 
center of Europe and beyond the Mediterranean into 
the heart of Asia; and Austria-Hungary was to be 
as much their tool and pawn as Servia or Bulgaria 
or Turkey or the ponderous states of the East. 
Austria-Hungary, indeed, was to become part of the 
central German Empire, absorbed and dominated by 
the same forces and influences that had originally 
cemented the German states themselves. The dream 
had its heart at Berlin. It could have had a heart 
nowhere else!^^ It rejected the idea of solidarity of 
race entirely. The choice of peoples played no part 
in it at all. It contemplated binding together racial 
and political units which could be kept together only 
by force, — Czechs, Magyars, Croats, Serbs, Rouman- 
ians, Turks, Armenians, — the proud states of Bo- 
hemia and Hungary, the stout little commonwealths 
of the Balkans, the indomitable Turks, the subtle 
peoples of the East.^'^ These peoples did not wish to 
be united. They ardently desired to direct their 
own affairs, would be satisfied only hy undisputed 
independence. They could be kept quiet only by 
the presence or the constant threat of armed men. 
They would live under a common power only by 
sheer compulsion and await the day of revolution.^^ 



146 Democracy Today 

But the German military statesmen had reckoned 
with all that and were ready to deal with it in 
their own way. 

And they have actually carried the greater part 
of that amazing plan into execution ! Look how 
things stand. Austria is at their mercy. It has 
acted, not upon its own initiative or upon the choice 
of its own people, but at Berlin's dictation ever 
since the war began. Its people now desire peace, 
but cannot have it until leave is granted from Ber- 
lin. The so-called Central Powers are in fact but a 
single Power. Servia is at its mercy, should its 
hands be but for a moment freed. Bulgaria has 
consented to its will, and Roumania is overrun. The 
Turkish armies, which Germans trained, are serving 
Germany, certainly not themselves, and the guns of 
German warships lying in the harbor at Constanti- 
nople remind Turkish statesmen every day that they 
have no choice but to take their orders from Berlin. ^^ 
From Hamburg to the Persian Gulf the net is spread. 

Is it not easy to understand the eagerness for 
peace that has been manifested from Berlin ever 
since the snare was set and sprung? Peace, peace, 
peace has been the talk of her Foreign Office for 
Qow a year and more ; not peace upon her own ini- 
tiative, but upon the initiative of the nations over 
which she now deems herself to hold the advantage. 
A little of the talk has been public, but most of it 
has been private. Through all sorts of channels it 
has come to me, and in all sorts of guises, but never 
with the terms disclosed which the German Govern- 
ment would be willing to accept.^^ 



Flag Day Address 147 

That government has other valuable pawns in its 
hands besides those I have mentioned. It still holds a 
valuable part of France, though with slowly relaxing 
grasp, and practically the whole of Belgium. Its 
armies press close upon Russia and overrun Poland at 
their will. It cannot go further ; it dare not go back. 
It wishes to close its bargain before it is too late and 
it has little left to offer for the pound of flesh it will 
demand.^^ 

The military masters under whom Germany is 
bleeding see very clearly to what point Fate has 
brought them. If tney tail back or are forced back 
an inch, their power both abroad and at home will 
fall to pieces like a house of cards. It is their powder 
at home they are thinking about now more than 
their power abroad. It is that power which is trem- 
bling under their very feet; and deep fear has en- 
tered their hearts. They have but one chance to 
perpetuate their military power or even their con- 
trolling political influicnce. If they can secure peace 
now wuth the immense advantages still in their 
hands which they have up to this point apparently 
gained, they w411 have justified themselves before 
the German people: they will have gained by fore<* 
what they promised to gain by it: an immense ex- 
pansion of German power, an immense enlargement 
of German industrial and commercial opportunities. 
Their prestige will be secure, and with their prestige 
their political power. If they fail, their people will 
thrust them aside ; a government accountable to the 
people themselves will be set up in Germany as it 



148 Democracy Today 

has been in England, in the United States, in France, 
and in all the great countries of the modern time 
except Germany. If they succeed they are safe and 
Germany and the world are undone; if they fail 
Germany is saved and the world will be at peace, 
[f they succeed, America will fall within the menace. 
We and all the rest of the world must remain armed, 
as they will remain, and must make ready for the 
Qcxt step in their aggression ; if they fail, the world 
may unite for peace and Germany may be of the 
tmion.^^ 

Do you not now understand the new intrigue,^^ the 
intrigue for peace, and w^hy the masters of Germany 
do not hesitate to use any agency that promises to 
effect their purpose, the deceit of the nations ? Their 
present particular aim is to deceive all those who 
throughout the world stand for the rights of peo- 
ples and the self-government of nations; for they 
see what immense strength the forces of justice and 
of liberalism are gathering out of this war. They 
are employing liberals in their enterprise. They are 
using men, in Germany and without, as their spokes- 
men whom they have hitherto despised and op- 
pressed, using them for their own destruction, — 
Socialists,^* the leaders of labor, the thinkers they have 
hitherto sought to silence. Let them once succeed 
and these men, now their tools, will be ground to 
powder beneath the weight of the great military 
empire they will have set up; the revolutionists in 
Russia will be cut off from all succor or cooperation 
in western Europe and a counter revolution fostered 



Flag Day Address 149 

and supported ; Germany herself will lose her chance 
of freedom; and all Europe will ar'm for the next, 
the final struggle. 

The sinister intrigue is being no less actively con- 
ducted in this country than in Russia and in every 
country in Europe to which the agents and dupes of 
the Imperial German Government can get access. 
That government has many spokesmen here, in 
places high and low. They have learned discretion. 
They keep within the law. It is opinion they utter 
now, not sedition. They proclaim the liberal pur- 
poses of their masters; declare this a foreign war 
which can touch America with no danger to either 
her lands or her institutions; set England at the 
center of the stage and talk of her ambition to assert 
economic dominion throughout the world ; appeal to 
our ancient tradition of isolation in the politics of 
the nations ; and seek to undermine the government 
with false professions of loyalty to its principles. 

But they will make no headway. The false betray 
themselves always in every accent. It is only 
friends and partisans of the German Government 
whom we have already identified who utter these 
thinly disguised disloyalties. The facts are patent 
to all the world, and nowhere are they more plainly 
seen than in the United States, where we are accus- 
tomed to deal with facts and not with sophistries; 
and the great fact that stands out above all the rest 
is that this is a People's War, a war for freedom 
and justice and self-government amongst all the 
nations of the world, a war to make the world safe 



150 Democracy Today 

for the peoples who live upon it and have made it 
their own, the German people themselves included; 
and that with us rests the choice to break through all 
these hypocrisies and patent cheats and masks of 
brute force and help set the world free, or else 
stand aside and let it be dominated a long age 
through by sheer weight of arms and the arbitrary 
choices of self-constituted masters, by the nation 
which can maintain the biggest armies and the most 
irresistible armaments, — a power to which the world 
has afforded no parallel and in the face of which 
political freedom must wither and perish. 

For us there is but one choice. We have made it. 
Woe be to the man or group of men that seeks to 
stand in our way in this day of high resolution when 
every principle we hold dearest is to be vindicated 
and made secure for the salvation of the nations. 
We are ready to plead at the bar of history, and 
our flag shall wear a new luster. Qnce more we 
shall make good with our lives and fortunes the 
great faith to which we were born, and a new glory 
shall shine in the face of our people. 



REPLY TO THE POPE 
WooDROw Wilson 

WASHINGTON, D. C, AUGUST, 27, 1917. -^ 

To His Holiness Benedictus XV., Pope: 

In acknowledgmeut of the communication of your 
Holiness to the belligerent peoples, dated Aug. 1, 
1917, the President of the United States requests me 
to transmit the following reply: 

Every heart that has not been blinded and hard- 
ened by this terrible war must be touched by this 
moving appeal of his Holiness the Pope, must feel 
the dignity and force of the humane and generous 
motives which prompted it, and must fervently wish 
that we might take the path of peace he so persua- 
sively points out. But it vrould be folly to take it 
if it does not in fact lead to the goal he proposes. 
Our response must be based upon the stern facts and 
upon nothing else. It is not a mere cessation of 
arms he desires; it is a stable and enduring peace. 
The agony must not be gone through with again, 
and it must be a matter of very sober judgment 
what will insure us against it. 

His Holiness in substance proposes that w^e return 
to the status quo ante bellum, and that then there 
be a general condonation, disarmament, and a con- 
cert of nations based upon ,an acceptance of the 
principle of arbitration; that by a similar concert 
freedom of the seas be established; and that the 

151 



152 Democracy Today 

territorial claims of France and Italy, the perplex- 
ing problems of the Balkan States, and the restitu- 
tion of Poland be left to such conciliatory adjust- 
ments as may be possible in the new- temper of such 
a peace, due regard being paid to the aspirations of 
the peoples whose political fortunes and affiliations 
will be involved. 

It is manifest that no part of this program can be 
successfully carried out unless the restitution of the 
status quo ante furnishes a firm and satisfactory 
basis for it. The object of this war is to deliver the 
free peoples of the world from the menace and the 
actual power of a vast military establishment con- 
trolled by an irresponsible Government which, hav- 
ing secretly planned to dominate the world, pro- 
ceeded to carry the plan out without regard either 
to the sacred obligations of treaty or the long-estab- 
lished practices and long-cherished principles of 
international action and honor ; which chose its own 
time for the war; delivered its blow fiercely and 
suddenly; stopped at no barrier either of law or of 
mercy; swept a whole continent within the tide of 
blood — not the blood of soldiers only, but the blood 
of innocent women and children also and of the 
helpless poor; and now stands balked but not 
defeated, the enemy of four-fifths of the world. This 
power is not the German people. It is the ruthless 
master of the German people. It is no business of 
ours how that great people came under its control 
or submitted with temporary zest to the domination 
of its purpose ; but it is our business to see to it 



Reply to the Pope 153 

that the history of the rest of the world is no longer 
l^ft to its handling. 

To deal with such a power by way of peace upon 
the plan proposed by his Holiness the Pope would, 
so far as we can see, involve a recuperation of its 
strength and a renewal of its policy ; would make it 
necessary to create a permanent hostile combination 
of nations against the German people, who are its 
instruments; and would result in abandoning the 
new-born Russia to the intrigue, the manifold subtle 
interference, and the certain counter-revolution 
which would be attempted by all the malign influ- 
ences to which the German Government has of late 
accustomed the world. Can peace be based upon a 
restitution of its power or upon any word of honor 
it eould pledge in a treaty of settlement and accom- 
modation? 

Responsible statesmen must now everywhere see, 
if they never saw before, that no peace can rest 
securely upon political or economic restrictions meant 
to benefit some nations and cripple or embarrass 
others, upon vindictive action of any sort, or any 
kind of revenge or deliberate injury. The Amer- 
ican people have suffered intolerable wrongs at the 
hands of the Imperial German Government, but they ^ 
desire no reprisals upon the German rpeople, who 
have themselves suffered all things in this war, 
which they did not choose. They believe that peace 
should rest upon the rights of peoples, not the rights 
of Governments — the rights of peoples great or 
small, weak or powerful — their equal right to free- 



154 Democracy Today 

dom and security and self-government and to a par« 
ticipation upon fair terms in the economic oppor- 
tunities of the world, the German people of course 
included if they will accept equality and not seek 
domination. 

The test, therefore, of every plan of peace is this : 
Is it based upon the faith of all the peoples involved 
or merely upon the word of an ambitious and intrig- 
uing Government, on the one hand, and of a group 
of free peoples on the other? This is the test which 
goes to the root of the matter; iand it is the test 
which must be applied. 

The purposes of the United States in this war are 
known to the whole world, to every people to whom 
the truth has been permitted to come. They do not 
need to be stated again. We seek no material advan- 
tage of any kind. We believe that the intolerable 
wrongs done in this w^ar by the furious and brutal 
power of the Imperial German Government ought 
to be repaired, but not at the expense of the sover- 
eignty of any people— rather a vindication of the 
sovereignty both of those that are weak and of those 
that are strong. Punitive damages, the dismember- 
ment of empires, the establishment of selfish and 
exclusive economic leagues, we deem inexpedient 
and in the end worse than futile, no proper basis 
for a peace of any kind, least of all for an endur- 
ing peace. That must be based upon justice and 
fairness and the common rights of mankind. 

We cannot take the word of the present rulers of 
Germany as a guarantee of anything that is to 



Reply to the Pope 155 

endure, iinless explicitly supported by such con- 
elusive evidence of the will and purpose of the Ger- 
man people themselves as the other j>eoples of the 
world would be justified in accepting. Without 
such guarantees treaties of settlement, agreements 
for disarmament, covenants to set up arbitration in 
the place of force, territorial adjustments, reconsti- 
tutions of small nations, if made with the German 
Government, no man, no nation could now depend 
on. We must await some new evidence of the pur- 
poses of the great peoples of the Central Powers 
God grant it may be given soon and in a way to 
restore the confidence of all peoples everywhere m 
the faith of nations and the possibility of a coven 
anted peace. 

Robert Lansing, 
Secretary of State of the United States of America 



WHY WE ARE AT WAR 
Franklin K. Lane 

Why are we fighting Germany? The brief answer 
is that onrs is a war of self-defense. We did not 
wish to fight Germany. She made the attack upon 
us; not on our shores, but on our ships, our lives, 
our rights, our future. For two years and more we ^ 
held to a neutrality that made us apologists for i 
things which outraged man's common sense of fair 
play and humanity. At each new offense— the inva- 
sion of Belgium, the killing of civilian Belgians, the 
attacks on Scarborough and other defenseless towns, 
the laying of mines in neutral waters, the fencing 
off of the seas — and on and on through the months 
we said: ''This is war — archaic, uncivilized war, , 
but war! All rules have been thrown away: all | 
Qobility ; man has come down to the primitive brute. 
And while we can not justify we will not intervene. J 
It is not our war." 

Then why are we in? Because we could not keep 
out. The invasion of Belgium, which opened the 
war, led to the invasion of the United States by 
slow, steady, logical steps. Our sympathies evolved 
into a conviction of self-interest. Our love of fair 
play ripened into alarm at our own peril. 

We talked in the language and in the spirit of 
good faith and sincerity, as honest men should talk, 
until we discovered that our talk was construed as 

156 



Why We Are at War 157 

cowardice. And Mexico was called upon to invade 
us. We talked as men would talk who cared alone 
for peace and the advancement of their own mate- 
rial interests, until we discovered that we were 
thought to be a nation of mere money makers, devoid 
of all character — until, indeed, we were told that we 
could not walk the highways of the world without 
permission of a Prussian soldier; that our ships 
might not sail without wearing a striped uniform^ 
of humiliation upon a narrow path of national sub- 
servience. "We talked as men talk who hope for 
honest agreement, not for war, until we found that 
the treaty torn to pieces at Liege was but the sym- 
bol of a policy tJiat made agreements worthless 
against a purpose that knew no word but success. 
And so we came into this war for ourselves. It 
is a war to save America — to preserve self-respect, 
to justify our right to live as we have lived, not as 
some one else wishes us to live. In the name of 
freedom we challenge with ships and men, money, 
and an undaunted spirit, that word "Verboten'* 
which Germany has written upon the sea and upon 
the land. For America is not the name of so much 
territory. It is a living spirit, born in travail, 
grown in the rough school of bitter experiences, a 
living spirit which has purpose and pride, and con- 
science — knows why it wishes to live and to what 
;end, knows how it comes to be respected of the 
world, and hopes to retain that respect by living on 
with the light of Lincoln's love of man as its Old 
and New Testament. It is more precious that this 



158 Democracy Today 

America should live than that we Americans should 
live. And this America, as we ijow see, has been 
challenged from the first, of this war by the strong 
arm of a power that has no sympathy with our pur- 
pose and will not hesitate to destroy us if the law 
that we respect, the rights that are to us sacred, or 
the spirit that we have, stand across her set will to 
make this world bow^ before her policies, backed by 
her organized and scientific military system. The 
world of Christ — a neglected but not a rejected 
Christ — has come again face to face with the world 
of Mahomet, who willed to win by force. 

With this background of history and in this sense, 
then, we fight Germany — 

Because of Belgium — invaded, outraged, enslaved, 
impoverished Belgium. We can not forget Liege, 
Louvain, and Cardinal Mercier. Translated into 
terms of American history, these names stand for 
Bunker Hill, Lexington, and Patrick Henry. 

Because of France — invaded, desecrated France, a 
million of whose heroic sons have died to save the 
land of Lafayette. Glorious golden France, the pre- 
server of the arts, the land of noble spirit — the first 
land to follow our lead into republican liberty. 

Because of England — from whom came the laws, 
traditions, standards of life, and inherent love of 
liberty which we call Anglo-Saxon civilization. We 
defeated her once upon the land and once upon the 
sea.^ But Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and Can- 
ada are free because of w^hat we did. And they are 
with us in the fight for the freedom of the seas. 



Why We Are at War 159 

Because of Russia^ — New Russia. She must not be 
overwhelmed now. Not now, surely, when she is 
just born into freedom. Her peasants must have 
their chance; they must go to school to Washing- 
ton, to Jefferson, and to Lincoln until they know 
their way about in this new, strange w^orld of gov- 
ernment by the popular ivill. 

Because of other peoples, with their rising hope 
that the world may be freed from government by 
the soldier. 

We are fighting Germany because she sought to 
terrorize us and then to fool us. We could not 
believe that Germany would do what she said she 
would do upon the seas. 

We still hear the piteous cries of children coming 
up out of the sea where the Liisitania went down. 
And Germany has never asked forgiveness of the 
world. 

We saw the Sussex sunk, crowded with the sons and 
daughters of neutral nations. 

We saw ship after ship sent to the bottom — ships 
of mercy bound out of America for the Belgian 
starving; ships carrying the Red Cross and laden 
with che wounded of all nations ; ships carrying 
food and clothing to friendly, harmless, terrorized 
peoples; ships flying the Stars and Stripes — sent to 
the bottom hundreds of miles from shore, manned 
by American seamen, murdered against all law, with- 
out warning. 

We believed Germany's promise that she would 
! respect the neutral flag and the rights of neutrals, 



160 Democracy Today 

£Lnd we held our anger and outrage in cheek. But 
now we see that she was holding us off with fair 
promises until she could build her huge fleet of sub- 
marines.^ For when spring came she blew her prom- 
ise into the air, just as at the beginning she had 
torn uj) that "scrap of paper. '"^ Then we saw clearly 
that there was but one law for Germany — her will 
to rule. 

We are fighting Germany because she violated our 
confidence. Paid German spies filled our cities. Offi- 
cials of her Government, received as the guests of 
this Nation, lived with us to bribe and terrorize, 
defying our law and the law of nations. 

We are fighting Germany because while we were 
yet her friends — the only great power that still held 
hands off — she sent the Zimmermann note,^ calling to 
her aid Mexico, our southern neighbor, and hoping 
to lure Japan, our western neighbor, into war 
against this Nation of peace. 

The nation that would do these things proclaims 
the gospel that government has no eonscience. And 
this doctrine can not live, or else democracy must 
die. For the nations of the world must keep faith. 
There can be no living for us in a world where the 
state has no conscience, no reverence for the things 
of the spirit, no respect for international law, no^ 
mercy for those who fall before its force. What an . 
unordered world ! Anarchy i The anarchy of rival ; 
wolf packs! 

We are fighting Germany because in this war feu- 
dalism^ is making its last stand against on-coming 



Why We Are at War 161 

democracy. "We see it now. This is a war against 
an old spirit, an ancient, outworn spirit. It is a 
war against feudalism — the right of the castle on 
the hill to rule the village below. It is a war for 
democracy — the right of all to be their own masters. 
Let Germany be feudal if she will, but she must not 
spread her system over the world that has outgrown 
it. Feudalism plus science, thirteenth century plus 
twentieth — this is the religion of the mistaken Ger- 
many that has linked itself with the Turk ; that has, 
too, adopted the method of Mahomet. "The state 
has no conscience. " ' ' The state can do no wrong. ' '"^ 
With the spirit of the fanatic she believes this gos- 
pel and that it is her duty to spread it by force. 
With poison gas that makes living a hell, with sub- 
marines that sneak through the seas to slyly murder 
noncombatants, with dirigibles that bombard men 
and women while they sleep, with a perfected sys- 
tem of terrorization that the modern world first 
heard of when German troops entered China,^ Ger- 
man feudalism is making war upon mankind. Let 
this old spirit of evil have its way and no man will 
live in America without paying toll to it in man- 
hood and in money. This spirit might demand Can- 
ada from a defeated, navyless England, and then 
our dream of peace on the north would be at an 
end. We would live, as France has lived for forty 
years, in haunting terror. 

America speaks for the world in fighting Ger- 
many. Mark on a map those countries which are 
Germany's allies and you will mark but four, run- 



162 Democracy Today 

ft 

ning from the Baltic through Austria and Bulgaria 
to Turkey. All the other nations the whole globe 
ari^und are in arms against her or are unable to 
move. There is deep meaning in this. We fight 
with the world for an honest world in which nations 
keep their word, for a world in which nations do 
not live by swagger or by threat, for a world in 
which men think of the ways in which they can 
conquer the common cruelties of nature instead of 
inventing more horrible cruelties to inflict upon the 
spirit and body of man, for a world in which the 
ambition or the philosophy of a few shall not make 
miserable all mankind, for a world in which the 
man is held more precious than the machine, the 
system, or the state. 



THE DUTIES OF THE CITIZEN 
Elihu Root 

[address delivered at CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, SEPTEMBER 

■ 14, 1917] 

The declaration of war between the United States 
and German}^ completely changed the relations of all 
the inhabitants of this country to the subject of peace 
and war. 

Before the declaration everybody had a right to 
discuss in private and in public the question whether 
the United States should carry on war against Ger- 
many. Everybody had a right to argue that there 
was no sufficient cause for war, that the consequences 
of war would be worse than the consequences 
of continued peace, that it would be wiser to submit 
to the aggressions of Germany against American 
rights, that it would be better to have Germany suc- 
ceed than to have the allies succeed in the great con- 
flict. 

Everybody holding these views had a right by 
expressing them to seek to influence public opinion 
and to affect the action of the President and the Con- 
gress, to whom the people of the country by their 
constitution have entrusted the power to determine 
whether the United States shall or shall not make war. 

But the question of peace or war has now been 
decided by the President and Congress, the sole 

16'^ 



164 Democracy Today 

authorities which had the right to decide, the lawful 
authorities upon whom rested the duty to decide. The 
question no longer remains open. It has been deter- 
mined and the United States is at war with Germany. 

The power to make such a decision is the most 
essential, vital, and momentous of all the powers of 
government. No nation can maintain its independ- 
ence or protect its citizens against oppression or con- 
tinue to be free which does not vest the power to 
make that decision in some designated authority, or 
which does not recognize the special and imperative 
duties of citizenship in time of war following upon 
such a decision lawfully made. 

One of the cardinal objects of the Union which 
formed this nation was to create a lawful authority 
whose decision and action upon this momentous ques- 
tion should bind all the states and all the people of 
every state. 

The constitution under which we have lived for one 
hundred and thirty years declares: "We, the people 
of the United States, in order to . . . provide for the 
common defense, promote the general welfare, and 
secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our 
posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution."^ 

The constitution so ordained vests in Congress the 
power to declare war, to raise and support armies, to 
provide and maintain a navy,^ and it vests in the Pres- 
ident the power to command the army and navy.^ 

The power in this instance was exercised not sud- 
denly or rashly, but advisedly, after a long delay and 
discussion, and patience under provocation, after 



The Duties of the Citizen 165 

repeated diplomatic warnings to Germany known to 
the whole country, after clear notice by breach of 
diplomatic relations with Germany that the question 
was imminent, after long opportunity for reflection 
and discussion following that notice, and after a for- 
mal and deliberate presentation by the President to 
Congress of the reasons for action in an address which 
compelled the attention not of Congress alone but of 
all Americans and of all the world and which must 
forever stand as one of the great state papers of mod- 
ern times. ' . 

The decision was made by overwhelming majorities 
of both houses of Congress.^ When such a decision 
has been made the duties — and therefore the rights — 
of all the people of the country immediately change. 

It becomes their duty to stop discussion upon the 
question decided, and to act, to proceed immediately 
to do everything in their power to enable the govern- 
ment of their country to succeed in the war upon 
which the country has entered. It is a fundamental 
necessity of government that it shall have the power 
to decide great questions of policy and to act upon its 
decision. 

In order that there shall be action following a deci- 
sion once made, the decision must be accepted. Dis- 
cussion upon the question must be deemed closed. 

A nation which declares war and goes on discussing 
whether it ought to have declared war or not is impo- 
tent, paralyzed, imbecile, and earns the contempt of 
mankind and the certainty of humiliating defeat and 
subjection to foreign control. 



166 Democracy Today 

A democracy which cannot accept its own decisions, 
made in accordance with its own laws, but must keep ; 
on endlessly discussing the questions already decided, 
has failed in the fundamental requirements of self 
government; and, if the decision is to make war, the 
failure to exhibit capacity for self-government by 
action will inevitably result in the loss of the right of 
self-government. 

Before the decision of a proposal to make war, men 
may range themselves upon one side or the other of 
the question ; but after the decision in favor of war, 
the country has ranged itself, and the only issue left 
for the individual citizen is whether he is for or 
against his country. From that time on arguments 
against the war in which the country is engaged are 
enemy arguments. 

Their spirit is the spirit .of rebellion against the 
government and laws of the United States. Their 
effect is to hinder and lessen that popular support of 
the government in carrying on the war which is nec- 
essary to success. Their manifest purpose is to pre- 
vent action by continuing discussion. 

They encourage the enemy. They tend to introduce 
delay and irresolution into our own councils. The 
men who are speaking and writing and printing argu- 
ments against the war now, and against everything 
which is being done to carry on the war, are render- 
ing more effective service to Germany than they ever 
€Ould render in the field with arms in their hands. 

The purpose and effect of what they are doing is so 
plain that it is impossible to resist the conclusion that 



The Duties of • the Citizen 167 

the greater part of them are at heart traitors to the 
United States and wilfully seeking to bring about tho 
triumph of Germany and the humiliation and defeat 
of their own country. 

Somebody has to decide where armies are to fight, 
whether our territory is to be defended by waiting 
here until we are attacked or by going out and attack- 
ing the enemy before they get here. The power to 
make that decision and the duty to make it rest under 
the constitution of this country with the President as 
commander-in-chief. 

When the President has decided that the best way 
to beat Germany is to send our troops to France and 
Belgium, that is the way the war must be carried on, 
if at all. 

I think the decision was wise. Others may think it 
unwise. But, when the decision has been made, what 
we think is immaterial. The commander-in-chief, with 
all the advice and all the wisdom he can command, 
has decided when and where the American army is to 
move. The army must obey, and all loyal citizens of 
the country will do their utmost to make that move- 
ment a success. 

Anybody who seeks by argument or otherwise to 
stop the execution of the order sending troops to 
France and Belgium is simply trying to prevent the 
American government from carrying on the war suc- 
cessfully. He is aiding the enemies of his country, 
and if he understands what he is really doing, he is 
a traitor at heart. 



168 Democracy Today 

It is beyond doubt that many of the professed paci- 
fists, the opponents of the war after the war has been 
entered upon, the men who are trying to stir up resist- 
ance to the draft, the men who are inciting strikes in 
the particular branches of production which are nec- 
essary for the supply of arms and munitions of war, 
are intentionally seeking to aid Germany and defeat 
the United States. 

As time goes on and the character of these acts " 
becomes more and more clearly manifest, all who con- 
tinue to associate with them must come under the 
same condemnation as traitors to their country. 

There are doubtless some who do not understand 
what this struggle really is. Some who were bom 
here resent interference with their comfort and pros- 
perity, and the demands for sacrifice which seem to 
them unnecessary, and they fail to see that the time « 
has come when, if Americans are to keep the inde- i 
pendence and liberty which their fathers won by suf- 
fering and sacrifice, they in their turn must fight 
again for the preservation of that independence and 
liberty. 

There are some bom abroad who have come to this 
land for a greater freedom and broader opportunities 
and have sought and received the privileges of Amer- 
ican citizenship, who are swayed by dislike for som 
ally or by the sympathies of German kinship, and fail 
to see that the time has come for them to make good 
the obligations of their sworn oaths of naturalization. 

This is the oath that the applicant for citizenship 
makes : 



i 



The Duties of the Citizen 169 

' * That he will support the constitution of the United 
States, and that he absolutely and entirely renounces 
all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, poten- 
tate, state, or sovereignty; that he will support and 
defend the constitution and laws of the United States 
against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and bear 
true faith and allegiance to the same." 

All these naturalized citizens who are taking part 
in this obstruction to our government in the conduct 
of the war are false to their oaths, are forfeiting their 
rights of citizenship, are repudiating their honorable 
obligations, are requiting by evil the good that has 
been done them in the generous and unstinted hos- 
pitality with which the people of the United States 
have welcomed them to the liberty and the opportuni- 
ties of this free land. We must believe that in many 
cases this is done because of failure to understand 
what this war really is. 

This is a war of defense. It is perfectly described 
in the words of the constitution which established this 
nation: **To provide for the common defense" and 
"To secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and 
^ur posterity." 

The national defense demands not merely force, but 
intelligence. It requires foresight, consideration of 
the policies and purposes of other nations, understand- 
ing of the inevitable or probable consequences of the 
acts of other nations, judgment as to the time when 
successful defense may be made, and when it will be 
too late, and prompt action before it is too late. 



170 Democracy Today 

By entering this war in April, the United States 
availed itself of the very last opportunity to defend 
itself against subjection to German power before it 
was too late to defend itself successfully. 

For many years we have pursued our peaceful 
course of internal development protected in a variety 
of ways. We were protected by the law of nations 
to which all civilized governments have professed their 
allegiance. So long as we committed no injustice our- 
selves we could not be attacked without a violation of 
that law. 

We were protected by a series of treaties under 
which all the principal nations of the earth agreed to 
respect our rights and to maintain friendship with 
us. We were protected by an extensive system of 
arbitration created by or consequent upon the peace 
conferences at The Hague, and under which all con- 
troversies arising under the law and under treaties 
were to be settled peaceably by arbitration and not 
by force. 

We were protected by the broad expanse of ocean 
separating us from all great military powers, and by 
the bold assertion of the Monroe Doctrine that if any 
of those powers undertook to overpass the ocean and 
establish itself upon these western continents that 
would be regarded as dangerous to the peace and 
safety of the United States, and would call upon her 
to act in her defense. 

We were protected by the fact that the policy and 
the fleet of Great Britain were well known to support 
the Mohroe Doctrine. We were protected by the deli- 



The Duties of the Citizen 171 

cate balance of power in Europe which made it seem 
not worth while for any power to engage in a conflict 
here at the risk of suffering from its rivals there. 

All these protections were swept away by the war 
which began in Europe in 1914. The war was begun 
by the concerted action of Germany and Austria — the 
invasion of Serbia on the east by Austria and the 
invasion of Luxembourg and Belgium on the west by 
Germany. Both invasions were in violation of the 
law of nations, and in violation of the faith of treaties. 

Everybody knew that Russia was bound in good 
faith to come to the relief of Serbia, that France was 
bound by treaty to come to the aid of Russia, that 
England was bound by treaty to come to the aid of 
Belgium, so that the invasion of these two small states 
was the beginning of a general European war. 

These acts, which have drenched the world with 
blood, were defended and justified in the bold avowal 
of the German government that the interests of the 
German state were superior to the obligations of law 
and the faith of treaties,^ that no law or treaty was 
binding upon Germany which it was for the interest 
of Germany to violate. 

All pretense of obedience to the law of nations and 
of respect for solemn promises was thro-^vn off; and^ 
in lieu of that system of lawful and moral restraint 
upon power which Christian civilization has been 
building up for a century was reinstated the cynical 
philosophy of Frederick the Great, the greatest of the 
Hohenzollerns, who declares: 



172 * Democracy Today 

* ' Statesmanship can be reduced to three principles : 
First, to maintain your power, and, according to cir- 
cumstances, to extend it. Second, to form an alliance 
only for your own advantage. Third, to command 
fear and respect, even in the most disastrous times. 

*'Do not be ashamed of making interested alliances 
from which you yourself can derive the whole advan- 
tage. Do not make the foolish mistake of not break- 
ing them when you believe your interests require it,, 

''Above all, uphold the following maxim: To 
despoil your neighbors is to deprive them of the means 
of injuring you. 

**When he is about to conclude a treaty with some 
foreign power, if a sovereign remembers he is a Chris- 
tion, he is lost. ' * 

From 1914 until the present, in a war waged by 
Germany with a revolting barbarity unequaled since 
the conquests of Genghis Khan,^ Germany has violated 
every rule agreed upon by civilized nations in mod- 
ern times to mitigate the barbarities of war or to pro- 
tect the rights of noncombatants and neutrals. She 
had no grievance against Belgium except that Bel- 
gium stood upon her admitted rights and refused to 
break the faith of her treaties by consenting that the 
neutrality of her territory should be violated to give 
Germany an avenue for the attack upon France. 

She has taken possession of the territory of Belgium 
and subjected her people to the hard yoke of a brutal 
soldiery. She has extorted vast sums from her peace- 
ful cities. She has burned her towns and battered 
down her noble churched. She has stripped the BeL 



The Duties, of the Citizeri 173 

gian factories of their machinery and deprived them 
of the raw material of manufacture. 

She has carried away her workmen by tens of thou^ 
sands into slavery, and her women into worse than 
slavery. She has slain peaceful noncombatants by the 
hundred, undeterred by the helplessness of age, of 
infancy, or of womanhood. She has done the same in 
northern France, in Poland, in Serbia, in Roumania. 

In all of these countries women have been outraged 
by the thousand, by tens of thousand, and who ever 
heard of a German soldier being punished for rape, 
or robbery, or murder? These revolting outrages 
upon humanity and law are not the casual incidents 
of war, but are the results of a settled policy of fright- 
fulness answering to the maxim of the Great Fred- 
erick to ' ' command respect through fear. ' ' 

Why were these things done by Germany? The 
answer rests upon the accumulated evidence of Ger- 
man acts and German words so conclusive that no pre- 
tense can cover it, no sophistry can disguise it. The 
answer is that this war was begun and these crimes 
against humanity were done because Germany was 
pursuing the hereditary policy of the Hohenzollems 
and following the instincts of the arrogant military 
caste which rules Prussia, to grasp the over-lordship 
of the civilized world and establish an empire in which 
she should play the role of ancient Rome. 

They were done because Prussian militarism still 
pursues the policy of power through conquest, of 
aggrandizement through force and fear, which in little 
more than two centuries has brought the puny mark 



174 Democracy Today 

of Brandenburg"^ — with its million and a half of 
people to the control of a vast empire — the greatest 
armed force of the modern world. 

It now appears beyond the possibility of doubt that 
this war was made by Germany pursuing a long and 
settled purpose. For many years she has been pre- 
paring to do exactly what she has done with a thor- 
oughness, a perfection of plans, and a vastness of pro- 
vision in men, munitions, and supplies never before 
equaled or approached in human history. 

She brought the war on when she chose, because 
she chose, in the belief that she could conquer the 
earth, nation by nation. 

All nations are egotistical, all peoples think most 
highly of their own qualities, and regard other peo- 
ples as inferior ; but the egotism of the ruling class of 
Prussia is beyond all example and it is active and 
aggressive. They believe that Germany is entitled to 
rule the world by virtue of her superiority in all these 
qualities which they include under the term ' ' kultur, ' ' 
and by reason of her power to compel submission by 
the sword. 

That belief does not evaporate in theory. It is 
translated into action, and this war is the action which 
results. This belief of national superiority and the 
right to assert it everywhere is a tradition from the 
Great Frederick.^ It has been instilled into th'^ minds 
of the German people through all the universities and 
schools. It has been preached from her pulpits and 
taught by her philosophers and historians. It has 
been maintained by her government and it will never 



The Duties of the Citizen 175 

cease to furnish the motive for the people of Prussia 
so long as German power enables the military auto- 
cracy of Prussia to act upon it with success. 

Plainly, if the power of the German government is 
to continue, America can no longer look for protection 
to the law of nations or the faith of treaties or the 
instincts of humanity or the restraints of modem 
civilization. 

Plainly, also, if we had stayed out of the war and 
Germany had won there would no longer have been 
a balance of power in Europe or a British fleet to sup- 
port the Monroe Doctrine and protect America. 

Does any one indulge in the foolish assumption that 
Germany would not then have extended her lust for 
power by conquest to the American continent? Let 
him consider what it is for which the nations of 
Europe have been chiefly contending for centuries 
past. 

It has been for colonies. It has been to bring the 
unoccupied or weakly held spaces of the earth under 
their flags and their political control, in order to 
increase their trade and their power. 

Spain, Holland, Portugal, England, France, have 
all had their turn, and have covered the earth with 
their possessions. For thirty years Germany, the last 
comer, has been pressing forward with feverish activ- 
ity the acquisition of stations for her power on every 
coast and every sea, restive and resentful because she 
has been obliged to take what others have left. 

Europe, Asia, and Africa have been taken up. The 
Americas alone remain. Here in the vast and unde- 



176 Democracy Today 

fended spaces of the new world, fraught with poten- 
tial wealth incalculable, Germany could "find a place 
in the sun," to use her emperor's phrase; Germany 
could find her "liberty of national evolution," to use 
his phrase again. Every traditional policy, every 
instinct of predatory Prussia, would urge her into this 
new field of aggrandizement. 

What would prevent f The Monroe doctrine ? Yes. 
But what is the Monroe doctrine as against a nation 
which respects only force unless it can be maintained 
by force ? We already know how the German govern- 
ment feels about the Monroe doctrine. 

Bismarck declared it to be a piece of colossal impu- 
dence ; and, when President Roosevelt interfered to 
assert the doctrine for the protection of Venezuela, 
the present kaiser declared that if he then had a larger 
navy he would have taken America by the scruff of 
the neck.^ 

If we had stayed out of the war, and Germany had 
won, we should have had to defend the Monroe doc- 
trine by force or abandon it ; and if we abandoned it 
there would have been a German naval base in the 
Caribbean commanding the Panama canal, depriving 
us of that strategic line which unites our eastern and 
western coasts, and depriving us of the protection the 
expanse of ocean once gave, and an America unable 
or unwilling to protect herself against the establish- 
ment of a German naval base in the Caribbean would 
lie at the mercy of Germany, and subject to Ger- 
many's orders. 



The Duties of the Citizen 177 

America's independence would be gone unless she 
was ready to fight .for it^ and her security would 
thenceforth be not a security of freedom, but only a 
security purchased by submission. 

But if America had stayed out of the war and Ger- 
many had won, could we have defended the Monroe 
doctrine? Could we have maintained our independ- 
ence? For an answer to that question consider what 
we have been doing since the 2d of April last, when 
war was declared. 

Congress has been in continuous session passing 
with unprecedented rapidity laws containing grants 
of power and of money unexampled in our history. 
The executive establishment has been straining every 
nerve to prepare for war. The ablest and strongest 
leaders of industrial activity have been called from all 
parts of the country to aid the government. 

The people of the country have generously 
responded with noble loyalty and enthusiasm to tht 
call for the surrender of money and of customary 
rights, and the supply of men to the service of the 
country. 

Nearly half a year has passed, and still we are no'»; 
ready to fight. I am not blaming the government. 
It was inevitable. Preparation for modern war can- 
not be made briefly or speedily. It requires time — 
long periods of time; and the more peaceful and 
unprepared for war a democracy is the longer is the 
time required. 

It would have required just as long for America to 
prepare for war if we had stayed out of this war and 



178 Bemocmcy Today 

Germany had won and we had undjertaken to defend 
the Monroe doctrine or to defend our coasts when we 
had lost the protection of the Monroe doctrine. Month 
after month would have passed with no adequate army 
ready to fight, just as these recent months have pasced. 

But what would Germany have been doing in the 
meantime? How long would it have been before our 
attempts at preparation would have been stopped by 
German arms? A country that is forced to defend 
itself against the aggression of a, military autocracy 
always prepared for war must herself be prepared for 
war beforehand or she never will have the opportunity 
to prepare. 

The history, the character, the avowed principles of 
action, the manifest and undisguised purposes of the 
German autocracy made it clear and certain that if 
America stayed out of the great war, and Germany 
won, America would forthwith be required to defend 
herself and would be unable to defend herself against 
the same lust for conquest, the same will to dominate 
the world, which has made Europe a bloody shambles. 

"When Germany did actually apply her principles 
of action to us, and by the invasion of Belgium she 
violated the solemn covenant she has made with us^^ to 
observe the law of neutrality established for the pro- 
tection of peaceful states, when she- had arrogantly 
demanded that American commerce should surrender 
its lawful right of passage upon the high seas under 
penalty of destruction, when she had sunk American 
ships and sent to their death hundreds of American 
citizens, peaceful men, women, and children, when the 



The Duties of the Citizen 179 

Gulflight and the Faldha and the Persia and the 
Arabic and the Sussex and the Lusitania had been 
torpedoed \fithout warning in contempt of law and 
of humanity, when the German embassy at Washing- 
ton had been found to be the headquarters of a vast 
conspiracy of corruption within our country inciting 
sedition and concealing infernal machines in the car- 
goes of our ships and blowing up our factories with 
the workmen laboring in them, and when the govern- 
ment of Germany had been discovered attempting to 
incite Mexico and Japan to form a league with her to 
attack us and to bring about a dismemberment of our 
territory, then the question presented to the American 
people was not what shall be done regarding each of 
these specific aggressions taken by itself, but what 
shall be done by America to defend her commerce, her 
territory, her citizens, her independence, her liberty, 
her life as a nation against the continuance of assaults 
already begun by that mighty and conscienceless 
power which had swept aside every restraint and 
every principle of Christian civilization and was seek- 
ing to force upon a subjugated world the dark and 
cruel rule of a barbarous past. 

The question was how shall peaceful and unpre- 
pared and liberty loving America save herself from 
subjection to the military power of Germany. There 
was but one possible answer. There was but one 
chance for rescue and that was to act at once while 
the other democracies of the world were still main- 
taining their liberty against the oppressor, to prepare 
at once while the armies and the navies of England 



130 Democracy Today 

and France and Italy and Russia and Roumania were 
holding down Germany so that she could not attack 
us while our preparation was but half ai complished, 
to strike while there were allies loving freedom like 
ourselves to strike with us, to do our share to prevent 
the German kaiser from acquiring that domination 
over the world which would have left us without 
friends to aid us, without preparation, and without 
the possibility of successful defense. 

The instinct of the American democracy which led 
it to act when it did arose from a long delayed and 
reluctant consciousness still vague and half expressed, 
that this is no ordinary war which the world is wag- 
ing. It is no contest for petty policies and profits. 
It is a mighty and all-embracing struggle between two 
conflicting principles of human right and human 
duty. 

It is a conflict between the divine right of kings to 
govern mankind through armies and nobles and the 
right of the peoples of the earth to toil and endure 
and aspire to govern themselves by law in the free- 
dom of individual manhood. 

It is the climax of the supreme struggle between 
autocracy and democracy. No nation can stand aside 
and be free from its effects. The two systems cannot 
endure together in the same world. 

If autocracy triumphs, military power lustful of 
dominion, supreme in strength, intolerant of human 
rights, holding itself superior to law, to morals, to 
faith, to compassion, will crush out the free democ- 
racies of the world. If autocracy is defeated and 



The Duties of the Citizen 181 

nations are compelled to recognize the rules of law 
and of morals, then and then only will democracy be 
safe. 

To this great conflict for human rights and human 
liberty America has committed herself. There can be 
no backward step. There must be either humiliating 
and degrading submission or terrible defeat or glori- 
ous victory. It was no human will that brought us to 
this pass. It was not the President. It was not Con- 
gress. It was not the press. It was not any political 
party. It was not any section or part of our people. 

It was that in the providence of God the mighty 
forces that determine the destinies of mankind beyond 
the control of human purpose have brought to us the 
time, the occasion, the necessity, that this peaceful 
people so long enjoying the blessings of liberty and 
justice for which their fathers fought and sacrificed 
shall again gird themselves for conflict, and with all 
the forces of manhood nurtured and strengthened by 
liberty offer again the sacrifice of possessions and of 
life itself, that this nation may still be free, that the 
mission of American democracy shall not have failed, 
that the world shall be free. 



WHAT DEMOCRACY MEANS 
WooDROw Wilson 

[address before the AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR 
DELIVERED AT BUFFALO, NEW YORK, NOV. 12, 1917] 

I esteem it a great privilege and a real honor to be 
thus admitted to your public councils. When your 
executive committee paid me the compliment of invit- 
ing me here I gladly accepted the invitation because 
it seems to me that this above all other times in our 
history is the time for common counsel, for the draw- 
ing not only of the energies but of the minds of the 
nation together. 

I thought that it was a welcome opportunity for 
disclosing to you some of the thoughts that have been 
gathering in my mind during the last momentous 
months. 

I am introduced to you as the president of the 
United States, and yet I would be pleased if you would 
put the thought of the office into the background and 
regard me as one of your fellow citizens who has come 
here to speak not the words of authority but the 
words of counsel, the words which men should speak 
to one another who wish to be frank in a moment 
more critical perhaps than the history of the world 
has ever yet known, a moment when it is every man's 
duty to forget himself, to forget his own interests, to 
fill himself with the nobility of a great national and 

182 



What Democracy Means 183 

world conception and act upon a new platform ele- 
vated above the ordinary affairs of life, elevated to 
where men have views of the long destiny of man- 
kind. 

I think that in order to realize just what this 
moment of counsel is, it is very desirable that we 
should remind ourselves just how this war came about 
and just what it is for. You can explain most wars 
very simply, but the explanation of this is not so sim- 
ple. Its roots run deep into all the obscure soils of 
history, and in my view this is the last decisive issue 
between the old principles of power and the new 
principles of freedom. 

The war was started by Germany. Her authorities 
deny that they started it. But I am willing to let the 
statement I have just made await the verdict of his- 
tory. And the thing that needs to be explained is 
why Germany started the war. 

Remember what the position of Germany in the 
world was — as enviable a position as any nation has 
ever occupied. The whole world stood at admiration 
of her wonderful intellectual and material achieve- 
ments, and all the intellectual men of the world went 
to school to her. As a university man I have been 
surrounded by men trained in Germany, men who had 
resorted to Germany because nowhere else could they 
get such thorough and searching training, particu- 
larly in the principles of science and the principles 
that underlie modern material achievements. 

Her men of science. had made her industries per- 
haps the most competent industries in the world, and 



184 Democracy Today 

the label, "Made in Germany," was a guarantee of 
good workmanship and of sound material. She had 
access to all the markets of the world, and every other 
man who traded in those markets feared Germany 
because of her effective and almost irresistible com- 
petition. 

She had a place in the sun. Why was she not satis- 
fied ? What more did she want ? There was nothing 
in the world of peace that she did not already have 
and have in abundance. 

We boast of the extraordinary pace of American 
advancement. We show with pride the statistics of 
the increase of our industries and of the population 
of our cities. Well, those statistics did not match the 
recent statistics of Germany. Her old cities took on 
youth, grew faster than any American city ever grew ; 
her old industries opened their eyes and saw a new 
world and went out for its conquest; and yet the 
authorities of Germany were not satisfied. 

You have one part of the answer to the question 
why she was not satisfied in her methods of competi- 
tion. There is no important industry in Germany 
upon which the government has not laid its hands to 
direct it, and when necessity arise, control it. 

You have only to ask any man whom you meet, 
who is familiar with the conditions that prevailed 
before the war in the matter of international compe- 
tition, to find out the methods of competition which 
the German manufacturers and exporters used under 
the patronage and support of the government of Ger- 
many.^ You will find that they were the same sorts of 



What Democracy Means 185 

competition that we have tried to prevent by law 
within our own borders. 

If they could not sell their goods cheaper than we 
could sell ours at a profit to themselves, they could 
get a subsidy from the government which made 
it possible to sell them cheaper anyhow, and the con- 
ditions of competition were thus controlled in large 
measure by the German government itself. But that 
did not satisfy the German government. 
• All the while there was lying behind its thought, in 
its dreams of the future, a political control which 
would enable it in the long run to dominate the labor 
and the industry of the world. They were not content 
with success by superior achievement ; they wanted 
success by authority. 

I suppose few of you have thought much about the 
Berlin to Bagdad railway.^ The Berlin to Bagdad 
railway was constructed in order to run the threat of 
force down the flank of the industrial undertakings 
of half a dozen other countries, so that when German 
competition came in it would not be resisted too far 
— ^because there was^ always the possibility of getting 
German armies into the heart of that country quicker 
than any other armies could be got there. 

Look at the map of Europe now. Germany, in 
thrusting upon us again and again the discussion of 
peace talks about what? Talks about Belgium, talks 
about northern France, talks about Alsace-Lorraine. 
Those are deeply interesting subjects to us and to 
them, but they are not talking about the heart of the 
matter. 



186 Democracy Today 

Take the map and look at it. Germany has abso- 
lute control of Austria-Hungary, practical control of 
the Balkan states, control of Turkey, control of Asia 
Minor. I saw a map in which the whole thing was 
printed in appropriate black the other day and the 
black stretched all the way from Hamburg to Bagdad 
— the bulk of German power inserted into the heart of 
the world. 

If it can keep that she has kept all that her dreams 
contemplated when the war began. If she can keep 
that, her power can disturb the world as long as she 
keeps it, always provided, for I feel bound to put this 
proviso in, always provided the present influences 
that control the German government continue to con- 
trol it. 

I believe that the spirit of freedom can get into the 
hearts of Germans and find as fine a welcome there 
as it can find in any other hearts. But the spirit of 
freedom does not suit the plans of the Pan-Germans.^ 
Power cannot be used with concentrated force against 
free peoples if it is used by free people. 

You know how many intimations come to us from 
one of the central powers that it is more anxious for 
peace than the chief central power; and you know- 
that it means that the people in that central power 
know that if the war ends as it stands, they will in 
effect themselves be vassals of Germany, notwithstand- 
ing that their populations are compounded with all 
the people of that part of the world, and notwith- 
standing the fact that they do not wish in their pride 



What democracy Means 187 

and proper spirit of nationality to be so absorbed and 
dominated. 

Germany is determined that the political power oi 
the world shall belong to her. There have been such 
ambitions before. They have been in part realized. 
But never before have those ambitions been based 
upon so exact and precise and scientific a plan of 
domination. 

May I not say that it is amazing to me that any 
group of people 'should be so ill-informed as to sup- 
pose, as some groups in Russia apparently suppose, 
that any reforms planned in the interest of the people 
can live in the presence of a Germany powerful 
enough to undermine or overthrow them by intrigue 
or force? Any body of free men that compounds with 
the present German government is compounding for 
its own destruction. But that is not the whole of the 
story. Any man in America, or anywhere else, who 
supposes that the free industry and enterprise of the 
world can continue if the Pan-German plan is 
achieved and German power fastened upon the world 
is as fatuous as the dreamers, of Russia. 

What I am opposed to is not the feeling of the 
pacifists, but their stupidity. My heart is with them, 
but my mind has a contempt for them. I want peace, 
but I know how to get it, and they do not. 

You will notice that I sent a friend of mine. Colonel 
House, to Europe,^ who is as great a lover of peace as 
any man in the world ; but I did not send him on a 
peace mission ; I sent him to take part in a conference 
as to how the war was to be won ; and he knows, as I 



188 Democracy Today 

know, that this is the way to get peace, if you want 
it for more than a few minutes. 

All of this is a preface to the conference that 1 
referred to with regard to what we are going to do. 
If we are true friends of freedom — our own or any- 
body else's — we will see that the power of this coun- 
try and the productivity of this country is raised to 
its absolute maximr.m and that absolutely nobody is 
allowed to stand in the way of it. 

When I say that nobody is allowed to stand in the 
way, I don't mean that they shall be prevented by 
the power of the government, but by the power of 
the American spirit. Our duty, if we are to do this 
great thing and show America to be what we believe 
her to be, the greatest. hope and energy of the world, 
then we must stand together night and day until the 
job is finished. 

While we are fighting for freedom we must see, 
among other things, that labor is free ; and that means 
a number of interesting things. It means not only 
that we must do what we have declared our purpose 
to do — see that the conditions of labor are n,ot ren- 
dered more onerous by the war — but also that we shall 
see to it that the instrumentalities by which the con- 
ditions of labor are improved are not blocked or 
checked. 

That we must do. That has been the matter about 
which I have taken pleasure in conferring from time 
to time with your president, Mr. Gompers. And, if 
I may be permitted to do so, I want to express my 
admiration of his patriotic courage, his large vision, 



What Democracy Means 189 

and his statesmanlike sense of what is to be done. 1 
like to lay my mind alongside of a mind that knows 
how to pull in harness. The horses that kick o\er 
the traces will have to be put in a corral. 

Now, to "stand the ground" means that nobody 
must interrupt the processes of our energy, if the 
interruption can possibly be avoided without the abso- 
lute invasion of freedom. To put it concretely that 
means this : Nobody has a right to stop the processes 
of labor until all the methods of conciliation and set- 
tlement have been exhausted ; and I might as well say 
right here that I am not talking to you alone. 

•You sometimes stop the courses of labor, but there 
are others who do the same. And I believe that I am 
speaking of my own experience not only but of the 
experience of others, when I say that you are reason- 
able in a larger number of cases than the capitalists. 

I am not saying these things to them personally 
yet, because I haven't had a chance. But in order to 
clear the atmosphere and come down to business every- 
body on both sides has got to transact business, and 
the settlement is never impossible when both sides 
want to do the square and right thing. Moreover, a 
settlement is always hard to avoid when the parties 
can be brought face to face. 

I can differ with a man much more radically when 
he isn't in the room than I can when he is in the room, 
because then the awkward thing is that he can come 
back at me and answer what i say. It is always dan- 
gerous for a man to have the floor entirely to himself. 
And, therefore, we must insist in every instance that 



190 Democracy Today 

the parties come into each other's presence and there 
discuss the issues between tJiem, and not separately in 
places which have no communication with each other. 

I always like to remind myself of a delightful say- 
ing of an Englishman of a past generation, Charles 
Lamb. He was with a group of friends and he spoke 
very harshly of some man who was not present. I 
ought to say that Lamb stuttered a little. And one 
of his friends said, "Why, Charles, I didn't know 
that you knew so and so ? " 

" 0, " he said, ' ' I don 't. I can 't hate a man I know. ' ' 

There is a great deal of human nature, of very pleas- 
ant human nature, in that saying. It is hard to hate 
a man you know. I must admit, parenthetically, that 
there are some 'politicians whose methods I do not 
believe in, but they are jolly good fellows, and if they 
only would not talk the wrong kind of politics with 
me I would love to be with them. And so it is all 
along the line in serious matters and things less 
serious. . 

We are all of the same clay and spirit and we can 
get together if we desire to get together. 

Therefore, my counsel to you is this : 

Let us show ourselves Americans by showing that 
we do not want to go off in separate camps or groups 
by ourselves, but that we want to cooperate with all 
other classes and all other groups in a common enter- 
prise which is to release the spirits of the world from 
bondage. 

I would be willing to set that up as the final test of 
an American, That is the meaning of democracy. 



What Democracy Means 191 

I have been very much distressed, my fellow citi- 
zens, by some of the things that have happened 
recently. The mob spirit is displaying" itself here 
and there in this country.^ I have sympathy with 
what some men are saying, but I have no sympathy 
with the men that take their punishment into their 
own hands ; and I want to say to every man who does 
join such a mob that I do not recognize him as worthy 
of the free institutions of the United States. 

There are some organizations^ in this country whose 
object is anarchy and the destruction of law, but I 
would not meet their efforts by making myself a part- 
ner in destroying the law. I despise and hate their 
purposes as much as any man, but I respect the 
ancient processes of justice and I would be too proud 
not to see them done justice, however wrong they are. 
And so I want to utter my earnest protest against any 
manifestation of the spirit of lawlessness anywhere or 
in any cause. 

Why, gentlemen, look what it means. We claim to 
be the greatest democratic people in the world, and 
democracy means first of all that we can govern our- 
selves. If our men have not self-control, then they are 
not capable of that great thing which we call demo- 
cratic government. A man who takes the law into 
his own hands is not the right man to cooperate in 
any form of orderly development of law and institu- 
tions. And some of the processes by which the strug- 
gle between capital and labor is carried on are 
processes that come very near to taking the law into 
your own hands. 



192 Democracy Today 

I do not mean for a moment to compare them with 
what I have just been speaking of, but I want you to 
see that they are mere gradations of the manifesta- 
tions of the unwillingness to cooperate, and the fun- 
damental lesson of the whole situation is that we must 
not only take common counsel but that we must yield 
to and obey common counsel. Not all of the instru- 
mentalities for this are at hand. I am hopeful that in 
the very near future pew instrumentalities may be 
organized by which we can see to it that various 
things that are now going on shall not go on. 

There are various processes of the dilution of labor 
and the unnecessary substitution of labor and bidding 
in distant markets and unfairly upsetting the whole 
competition of labor which ought not to go on — I mean 
now on the part of employers — and we must interject 
into this some instrumentality of cooperation by 
which the fair thing will be done all around. I am 
hopeful that some such instrumentalities may be- 
devised, but whether they are or not, we must us© ^ 
those that we have and upon every occasion where it 
is necessary to have such an instrumentality origin- 
ated upon that occasion, if necessary. 

And so, my fellow citizens, the reason that I came 
away from "Washington is that I sometimes get lonely 
down there. There are so many people in Washington 
who know things that are not so, and there are so few 
people in Washington who know anything about what 
the people of the United States are thinking, I 
have to come away to get reminded of the rest of the 
country ; I have to come away and talk to men. who 



1 



What Democracy Means 193 

are up ag"ainst the real thing and say to them, "I am 
with you if you are with me. ' ' And the only test of 
being with me is not to think about me personally at 
all, but merely to think of me as the expression for 
the time being of the power and dignity and hope of 
the United States. 



SECOND WAR MESSAGE 
WooDROw Wilson 

[address delivered before congress, DECEMBER 4, 

1917.] 

Eight months have elapsed since I last had the 
honor of addressing you. They have been months 
crowded with events of immense and grave signifi- 
cance for us. I shall not undertake to retail or even 
to summarize those events. The practical particulars 
of the part we have played in them will be laid before 
you in the reports of the executive departments. I 
shall discuss only our present outlook upon these vast 
affairs, our present duties, and the immediate means 
of accomplishing the objects we shall hold always in 
view. 

I shall not go back to debate the causes of the war. 
The intolerable wrongs done and planned against us 
by the sinister masters of Germany have long since 
become too grossly obvious and odious to every true 
American to need to be rehearsed. But I shall ask 
you to consider again and with very grave scrutiny 
our objectives and the measures by which we mean 
to attain them ; for the purpose of discussion here in 
this place is action and our action must move straight 
toward definite ends. Our object is, of course, to win 
the war, and we shall not slacken or suffer ourselves 
to be diverted until it is won. But it is worth while 

194 



Second War Message 195 

asking and answering the question, When shall we 
consider the war won? 

From one point of view it is not necessary to 
broach this fundamental matter. I do not doubt that 
the American people know what the war is about 
and what sort of an outcome they will regard as a 
realization of their purpose in it. As a nation we 
are united in spirit and intention. 

I pay little heed to those who tell me otherwise. 
I hear the voices of dissent — who does not? I hear 
the criticism and the clamor of the noisily thought- 
less and troublesome. I also see men here and there 
fling themselves in impotent disloyalty against the 
calm, indomitable power of the nation. I hear men 
debate peace who understand neither its nature nor 
the way in which we may attain it, with uplifted eyes 
and unbroken spirits. But I know that none of these 
speaks for the nation. They do not touch the heart 
of anything. They may safely be left to strut their 
uneasy hour and be forgotten.^ 

But from another point of view I believe that it 
is necessary to say plainly what we here at the seat 
of action consider the war to be for and what part we 
mean to play in the settlement of its searching issues. 
We are the spokesmen of the American people and 
they have a right to know whether their purpose is 
ours. They desire peace by the overcoming of evil, 
by the defeat once and for all of the sinister forces 
that interrupt peace and render it impossible, and 
they wish to know how closely our thought runs with 
theirs and what action we propose. They are impa- 



196 Democracy Today 

tient with those who desire peace by any sort of 
compromise — deeply and indignantly impatient — but 
they will be equally impatient with us if we do not 
make it plain to them what our objectives are and 
what we are planning* for in seeking to make conquest 
of peace by arms. 

I believe that I speak for them when I say two 
things: First, that this intolerable Thing of which 
the masters of Germany have shown us the ugly face, 
this menace of combined intrigue and f or ce,^ which we 
now see so clearly as the German power, a Thing with- 
out conscience or honor or capacity for covenanted 
peace, must be crushed, and if it be not utterly 
brought to an end, at least shut out from the friendly 
intercourse of the nations; and, second, that when 
this Thing and its power are indeed defeated and the 
time comes that we can discuss peace — when the Ger- 
man people have spokesmen whose word we can 
believe, and when those spokesmen are ready in the 
name of their people to accept the common judgment 
of the nations as to what shall henceforth be the 
bases of law and of covenant for the life of the world 
— ^we shall be willing and glad to pay the full price 
for peace and pay it ungrudgingly. We know what 
that price will be. It will be full, impartial justice 
— justice done at every point and to every nation that 
the final settlement must affect, our enemies as well 
as our friends. 

You catch, with me, the voices of humanity that 
are in the air. They grow daily more audible, more 
articulate, more persuasive, and they come from the 



i 



Second War Message 197 

hearts of men every where. They insist that the war 
shall not end in vindictive action of any kind; that 
no nation or people shall be robbed or punished 
because the irresponsible rulers of a single country 
have themselves done deep and abominable wrong. 
It is this thought that has been expressed in the 
formula, ' ' No annexations, no contributions, no puni- 
tive indemnities. ' ' * 

Just because this crude formula expresses the 
instinctive judgment as to the right of plain men 
everywhere it has been made diligent use of by the 
masters of German intrigue to lead the people of Rus- 
sia astray, and the people of every other country their 
agents could reach, in order that a premature peace 
might be brought about before autocracy has been 
taught its final and convincing lesson and the people 
of the world put in control of their own destinies. 

But the fact that a wrong use has been made of 
a just idea is no reason why a right use should not 
be made of it. It ought to be brought under the pat- 
ronage of its real friends. Let it be said again that 
autocracy must first be shown the utter futility of its 
claims to power or leadership in the modern world. 
It is impossible to apply any standard of justice so 
long as such forces are unchecked and undefeated 
as the present masters of Germany command. Not 
until that has been done can right be set up as arbiter 
and peacemaker among the nations. But when that 
has been done — as, God willing, it assuredly will be 
— ^we shall at last be free to do an unprecedented 
thing, and this is the time to avow our purpose to 



198 Democracy Today 

do it. We shall be free to base peace on generosity 
find justice, to the exclusion of all selfish claims to 
advantage even on the part of the victors. 

Let there be no misunderstanding. Our present 
and immediate task is to win the war, and nothing 
shall turn us aside from it until it is accomplished. 
Every power and resource we possess, whether of 
men, of money, or of materials, is being devoted and 
will continue to be devoted, to that purpose until it 
is achieved. Those who desire to bring peace about 
before that purpose is achieved, I counsel to carry 
their advice elsewhere. "We will not entertain it. 

We shall regard the war as won only when the 
German people say to us, through properly accredited 
representatives, that they are ready to agree to a 
settlement based upon justice and the reparation of 
the wrongs their rulers have done. They have done 
& wrong to Belgium^ which must be repaired. They 
have established a power over other lands and peo- 
ples than their own — over the great empire of Aus- 
tria-Hungary, over hitherto free Balkan states, over 
Turkey, and within Asia — which must be relinquished.^ 

Germany's success by skill, by industry, by knowl- 
edge, by enterprise we did not grudge or oppose, but 
admired rather. She had built up for herself a real 
empire of trade and influence, secured by the peace 
of the world. We were content to abide the rivalries 
of manufacture, science, and commerce that were in- 
volved for us in her success and stand or fall as we 
had or did not have the brains and the initiative to 
surpass her. 



Second War Message 199 

But at the moment when she had conspicuously won 
her triumphs of peace she threw them away to establish 
in their stead what the world will no longer permit 
to be established, military and political domination 
by arms, by which to oust whei*e she could not excel 
the rivals she most feared and hated. 

The peace we make must remedy that wrong. It 
must deliver the once fair lands and happy peoples 
of Belgium and northern France^ from the Prussian 
conquest and the Prussian menace, but it must also- 
deliver the peoples of Austria-Hungary, the peoples 
of the Balkans, and the peoples of Turkey, alike in 
Europe and in Asia, from the impudent and alien 
domination of the Prussian military and commercial 
autocracy. 

We owe it, however, to ourselves to say that we da 
not wish in any way to impair or to rearrange the 
Austro-Hungarian empire. It is no affair of ours, 
what they do with their own life, either industrially 
or politically. We do not purpose nor desire to dic- 
tate to them in any way. We only desire to see that 
their affairs are left in their own hands, in all mat- 
ters, great or small. We shall hope to secure for the 
peoples of the Balkan peninsula and for the people 
of the Turkish empire the right and opportunity to 
make their own lives safe, their own fortunes secure 
against oppression or injustice and from the dictation 
of foreign courts or parties, and our attitude and 
purpose with regard to Germany herself are of a like 
kind. 

We intend no wrong against the German empire,. 



200 Democracy Today 

no interference with her internal affairs. We should 
deem either the one or the other absolutely unjusti- 
fiable, absolutely contrary to the principles we have 
professed to live by and to hold most sacred through- 
out our life as a nation. 

The people of Germany are being told by the men 
whom they now permit to deceive them and to act as 
their masters that they are fighting for the very life 
and existence of their empire, a war of desperate self- 
defense against deliberate aggression.'^ Nothing could 
be more grossly or wantonly false, and we must seek 
by the utmost openness and candor as to our real aims \ 
to convince them of its falseness. We are, in fact, 
fighting for their emancipation from fear, along with j 
our own, from the fear as well as from the fact of ' 
unjust attack by neighbors or rivals or schemers after 
world empire. No one is threatening the existence 
or the independence or the peaceful enterprise of the 
German empire. | 

The worst that can happen to the detriment of the 
German people is this, that if they should still, after 
the war is over, continue to be obliged to live under 
ambitious and intriguing masters interested to disturb | 
the peace of the world, men or classes of men whom 
the other peoples of the world could not trust, it 
might be impossible to admit them to the partnership 
of nations which must henceforth guarantee the 
world's peace. That partnership must be a partner- 
ship of peoples, not a mere partnership of governments. 

It might be impossible, also, in such untoward 
circumstances, to admit Germany to the free economic 



I 



\ 



Second War Message 201 

intercourse which must inevitably spring out of the 
other partnerships of a real peace. But there would 
be no aggression in that; and such a situation, inevi- 
table because of distrust, would in the very nature of 
things sooner or later cure itself, by processes which 
would assuredly set in. 

The wrongs, the very deep wrongs,^ committed in 
this war will have to be righted. That of course. 
But they cannot and must not be righted by the com- 
misson of similar wrongs against Germany and her 
allies. The world will not permit the commission of 
similar wrongs as a means of reparation and settle- 
ment. Statesmen must by this time have learned that 
the opinion of the world is everywhere wide-awake 
and fully comprehends the issues involved. No repre- 
sentative of any self-governed nation will dare dis- 
regard it by attempting any such covenants of self- 
ishness and compromise as were entered into at the 
congress of Vienna.^ 

The thought of the plain people here and every- 
where throughout the world, the people who enjoy 
no privilege and have very simple and unsophisticated 
standards of right and wrong, is the air all govern- 
ments must henceforth breathe if they would live. 
It is in the full disclosing light of that thought that 
all policies must be conceived and executed in this 
midday hour of the world's life. 

German rulers have been able to upset the peace of 
the world only because the German people were not 
suffered under their tutelage, to share the comrade- 
ship of the other peoples of the world either in thought 



202 Democracy Today 

or in purpose. They were allowed to have no opinion 
of their own which might be set up as a rule of conduct 
for those who exercised authority over them?° But the 
congress that concludes this war will feel the full 
strength of the tides that run now in the hearts and 
consciences of free men everywhere. Its conclusions 
will run with those tides. 

All these things have been true from the very be- 
ginning of this stupendous war; and I cannot help 
thinking that if they had been made plain at the very 
outset the sympathy and enthusiasm of the Russian 
people might have been once for all enlisted on the 
side of the allies, suspicion and distrust swept away, 
and a real and lasting union of purpose effected." Had 
they believed these things at the very moment of their 
revolution and had they been confirmed in that belief 
since, the sad reverses which have recently marked 
the progress of their affairs toward an ordered and 
stable government of free men might have been 
avoided. 

The Russian people have been poisoned by the very 
same falsehoods that have kept the German people 
in the dark, and the poison has been administered by 
the very same hands.^^ The only possible antidote is 
the truth. It cannot be uttered too plainly or too 
often. 

From every point of view, therefore, it has seemed 
to be my duty to speak these declarations of purpose, 
to add these specific interpretations to what I took 
the liberty of saying to the senate in January. Our 
'entrance into the war has not altered our attitude 



Second War Message 203 

toward the settlement that must come when it is over. 
When I said in January^that the nations of the world 
were entitled not only to free pathways upon the sea, 
but also to assured and unmolested access to those 
pathways I was thinking, and I am thinking now, 
not. of the smaller and weaker nations alone, which 
need our countenance and support, but also of the great 
and powerful nations, and of our present enemies as 
well as our present associates in the war. I was think- 
ing, and am thinking now, of Austria herself, among 
the rest, as well as of Serbia and of Poland. Justice 
and equality of rights can be had only at a great price. 
We are seeking permanent, not temporary, foun- 
dations for the peace of the world, and must seek them 
candidly and fearlessly. As always, the right will 
prove to be the expedient. 

What shall we do, then, to push this great war of 
freedom and justice to its righteous conclusion? We 
must clear away with a thorough hand all impedi- 
ments to success, and we must make every adjustment 
of law that will facilitate the full and free use of our 
whole capacity and force as a fighting unit. 

One very embarrassing obstacle that stands in our 
way is that we are at war with Germany, but not with 
her allies.^* I therefore very earnestly recommend that 
the congress immediately declare the United States 
in a state of war with Austria-Hungary.^^ Does it 
seem strange to you that this should be the conclusion 
of the argument I have just addressed to you? It is 
not. It is in fact the inevitable logic of what I have 
said. Austria-Hungary is for the time being not her 



204 Democracy Today 

own mistress, but simply the vassal of the German 
government .^*^ We must face the facts as they are and 
act upon, them without sentiment in this stern busi- 
ness. 

The government of Austria-Hungary is not acting 
upon its own initiative or in response to the wishes and 
feelings of its own peoples, but as the instrument of 
another nation. We must meet its force with our own 
and regard the central powers as but one. The war 
can be successfully conducted in no other way. The 
same logic would lead also to a declaration of war 
against Turkey and Bulgaria. They also are the tools 
of Germany. But they are mere tools and do not yet 
stand in the direct path of our necessary action. We 
shall go wherever the necessities of this war carry us, 
but it seems to me that we should go only where 
immediate and practical considerations lead us and not 
heed any others. 

The financial and military measures which must be 
adopted will suggest themselves as the war and its 
undertakings develop, but I will take the liberty of 
proposing to you certain other acts of legislation which 
seem to me to be needed for the support of the war 
and for the release of our whole force and energy. 

It will be necessary to extend in certain particulars 
the legislation of the last session with regard to alien 
enemies ; and also necessary, I believe, to create a 
very definite and particular control over the entrance 
and departure of all persons into and from the United 
States. 

Legislation should be enacted defining as a criminal 



Second War Message 205 

offense every willful violation of the Presidential 
proclamations relating to enemy aliens promulgated 

17 

under Section 4,067 of the Revised Statutes and pro- 
viding appropriate punishments; and women as well 
as men should be included under the terms of the acts 
placing restraints upon alien enemies. It is likely 
that as time goes on many alien enemies will be willing 
to be fed and housed at the expense of the government 
in the detention camps, and it would be the purpose of 
the legislation I have suggested to confine offenders 
among them in penitentiaries and other similar institu- 
tions where they could be made to work as other 
criminals do. 

Recent experience has convinced me that the Con- 
gress must go further in authorizing the Government 
to set limits to prices. The law of supply and demand, 
I am sorry to say, has been replaced by the law of 
unrestrained selfishness.^* While we have eliminated 
profiteering in several branches of industry it still 
runs impudently rampant in others. The farmers, 
for example, complain with a great deal of justice 
that, while the regulation oj: food prices restricts their 
incomes, no restraints are placed upon the prices of 
most of the things they must themselves purchase, and 
similar iniquities obtain on all sides. 

It is imperatively necessary that the consideration 
of the full use of the water power of the country and 
also the consideration of the systematic and yet eco- 
nomical development of such of the natural resources 
of the country as are still under the control of the 
Federal Government should be resumed and affirma- 



206 Democracy Today 

tively and constructively dealt with at the earliest 
possible moment. The pressing need of such legis- 
lation is daily becoming more obvious. 

The Legislation proposed at the last session with 
regard to regulated combinations among our export- 
ers, in order to provide for our foreign trade a more 
effective organization and method of cooperation, 
ought by all means to be completed at this session. 

And I beg that the members of the House of Rep- 
resentatives will permit me to express the opinion that 
it will be impossible to deal in any way but a very 
wasteful and extravagant fashion with the e lormous 
appropriations of the public moneys which must 
continue to be made, if the war is to be properly 
sustained, unless the House will consent to return to 
its former practice of initiating and preparing all 
appropriation bills through a single committee, in 
order that responsibility may be centered, expendi- 
tures standardized and made uniform, and waste and 
duplication as much as possible avoided. ^° 

Additional legislation may also become necessary 
before the present Congress adjourns in order to effect 
the most efficient coordination and operation of the 
railway and other transportation systems of the coun- 
try";' but to that I shall, if circumstances should de- 
mand, call the attention of Congress upon another 
occasion. 

If I have overlooked anything that ought to be; 
done for the more effective conduct of the war, your 
own counsels will supply the omission. What I am 
perfectly cJear about is that in the present session of 



Second War Message 201 

the Congress our whole attention and energy should 
be concentrated on the vigorous and rapid and suc- 
cessful prosecution of the great task of winning the 
war. 

We can do this with all the greater zeal and en- 
thusiasm because we know that for us this is a war 
of high principle, debased by no selfish ambition of 
conquest or spoliation; because we know, and all the 
world knows, that we have been forced into it to save 
the very institutions we live under from corruption 
and destruction. The purposes of the central powers 
strike straight at the very heart of everything we 
believe in ; their methods of warfare outrage every 
principle of humanity and of knightly honor^ their 
intrigue Jias corrupted the very thought and spirit of 
many of our people; their sinister and secret 
diplomacy has sought to take our very territory away 
from us and disrupt the union of the States.^^ Our 
safety would be at an end, our honor forever sullied 
and brought into contempt were we to permit their 
triumph. They are striking at the very existence of 
democracy and liberty. 

It is because it is for us a war of high, disinterested 
purpose, in which all the free peoples of the world are 
banded together for the vindication of right, a war 
for the preservation of our nation and of all that it 
has held dear of principle and of purpose, that we 
feel ourselves doubly constrained to propose for its 
outcome only that which is righteous and of irreproach. 
able intention, for our foes as well as for our friends. 

The cause being just and holy, the settlement must 



208 Democracy Today 

be of like motive and quality. For this we can fight, 
but for nothing less noble or less worthy of our tradi- 
tions. For this cause we entered the war and for 
this cause will we battle until the last gun is fired. 

I have spoken plainly because this seems to me the 
time when it is most necessary to speak plainly, in 
order that all the world may know that even in the 
heat and ardor of the struggle and when our whole 
thought is of carrying the war through to its end we 
have not forgotten any ideal or principle for which 
the name of America has been held in honor among 
the nations and for which it has been our glory to 
contend in the great generations that went before us. 

A supreme moment of history has come. The eyes 
of the people have been opened and they see. The 
hand of God is laid upon the nations. He will show 
them favor, I devoutly believe, only if they rise to 
the clear heights of His own justice and mercy. 



PROGRAM OF THE WORLD'S PEACE* 
WooDROw Wilson 

[address delivered before congress JANUARY 8, 

1918.] 

Once more, as repeatedly before, the spokesmen of 
the central empires have indicated their desire to dis- 
cuss the objects of the war and the possible bases of a 
general peace.^ Parleys have been in progress at Brest- 
Litovsk" between Russian representatives and repre- 
sentatives of the central powers to which the attention 
of all the belligerents has been invited for the purpose 
of ascertaining whether it may be possible to extend 
these parleys into a general conference with regard to 
terms of peace and settlement. 

The Russian representatives presented not only a 
perfectly definite statement of the principles upon 
which they would be willing to conclude peace, but 
also an equally definite program of the concrete appli- 
cation of those principles.^ 

The representatives of the central powers, on their 
part, presented an outline of settlement which, if 
much less definite, seemed susceptible of liberal inter- 
pretation until their specific program of practical terms 
was added. 

That program proposed no concessions at all, either 
to sovereignty of Russia or to the preferences of the 
population with whose fortunes it dealt, but meant, 
in a word, that the central empires were to keep every 
* Lloyd George — App., p. 107. ^^^ 



210 Democracy Today 

foot of territory their armed forces had occupied — 
every province, every city, every point of vantage — as 
a permanent addition to their territories and their 
power. 

It is a reasonable conjecture that the general prin- 
ciples of settlement which they at first suggested origi- 
nated with' the more liberal statesmen of Germany and 
Austria, the men who have begun to feel the force of 
their own people 's thought and purpose, while the con- 
crete terms of actual settlement came from the military 
leaders, who have no thought but to keep what they 
have got. The negotiations have been broken off. The 
Russian representatives were sincere and in earnest. 
They cannot entertain such proposals of conquest and 
domination. 

The whole incident is full of significance. It is also 
full of perplexity. With whom are the Eussian repre- 
sentatives dealing ? For whom are the representatives 
of the central empires speaking?* Are they speaking 
for the majorities of their respective parliaments or 
for the minority parties — that military and imperial- 
istic minority which has so far dominated their whole 
policy and controlled the affairs of Turkey and the 
Balkan states, which have felt obliged to become their 
associates in this war ? 

The Russian representatives have insisted, very 
justly, very wisely, and in the true spirit of democ- 
racy, that the conferences they have been holding with 
the Teutonic and Turkish statesmen should be held 
within open, not closed, doors, and all the world has 
been audience, as was desired. 



Program of the World's Peace 211 

To whom have we been listening, then? To those 
who speak the spirit and intention of the resolutions 
of the German reichstag of the 19th of July I'lst, the 
spirit and intention of the liberal leaders and parties 
of Germany, or to those who resist and defy that spirit 
and intention and insist upon conquest and subjuga- 
tion ? Or are we listening in fact to both, unreconciled 
and in open and hopeless contradiction? These are 
very serious and pregnant questions. Upon the answer 
to them depends the peace of the world. 

But whatever the results of the parleys at Brest- 
Litovsk, whatever the confusions of counsel and of 
purpose in the utterances of the spokesmen of the cen- 
tral empires, they have again attempted to acquaint 
the world with their objects in the war and have again 
challenged their adversaries to say what their objects 
are and what sort of settlement they would deem just 
and satisfactory. 

There is no good reason why that challenge should 
not be responded to, and responded to with the utmost 
candor. We did not wait for it. Not once, but again 
and againf we have laid our whole thought and purpose 
before the world, not in general terms only, but each 
time with sufficient definition to make it clear what sort 
of definitive terms of settlement must necessarily 
■spring out of them. 

Within the last week Mr. Lloyd George*^ has spoken 
with admirable candor and in admirable spirit for the 
people and government of Great Britain. There is no 
confusion of counsel among the adversaries of the cen- 
tral powers, no uncertainty of principle, no vagueness 
•of detail. 



212 Democracy Today 

The only secrecy of counsel, the only lack of fear- 
less frankness, the only failure to make definite state- 
ment o." the objects of the war lies with Germany and 
her allies. The issues of life and death hang upon 
these definitions. No statesman who has the least con- 
ception of his responsibility ought for a moment to 
permit himself to continue this tragical and appalling 
outpouring of blood and treasure unless he is sure 
beyond a peradventure that the objects of the vital 
sacrifice are part and parcel of the very life of society 
and that the people for whom he speaks think them 
right and imperative as he does. 

There is, moreover, a voice calling for these defini- 
tions of principle and of purpose which is, it seems 
to me, more thrilling and more compelling than any 
of the many moving voices with which the troubled 
air of the world is filled. It is the voice of the Russian 
people. They are prostrate and all but helpless,^ it 
would seem, before the grim power of Germany, which 
has hitherto known no relenting and no pity. Their 
power apparently is shattered, and yet their soul is 
not subservient. They will not yield either in prin- 
ciple or in action. The conception of what is right, of 
what is humane and honorable for them to accept, has 
been stated with a frankness, a largeness of view, a 
generosity of spirit, and a universal human sympathy 
which must challenge the admiration of every friend 
of mankind ; and they have refused to compound their 
ideals or desert others that they themselves may be safe. 

They call to us to say what it is that we desire, in 
what, if in anything, our purpose and our spirit differ 



Program of the World^s Peace 213 

from theirs ; and I believe that the people of the United 
States would wish me to respond with utter, simplicity 
and frankness. 

Whether their present leaders believe it or not, it 
is our heartfelt desire and hope that some way may 
be opened whereby we may be privileged to assist the 
people of Russia to attain their utmost hope of liberty 
and ordered peace. 

It will be our wish and purpose that the processes 
of peace, when they are begun, shall be absolutely open, 
and that they shall involve and permit henceforth no 
secret understandings of any kind. The da}^ of con- 
quest and aggrandizement is gone by; so is also the 
day of secret covenants entered into in the interest of 
particular governments, and likely at some unlooked 
for moment to upset the peace of the world. 

It is this happy fact, now clear to the view of every 
public man whose thoughts do not still linger in an 
age that is dead and gone, which makes it possible for 
every nation whose purposes are consistent with jus- 
tice and the peace of the world to avow now or at any 
other time the objects it has in view 

We entered this war because violations of right had 
occurred which touched us to the quick and made the 
life of our own people impossible^ unless they were 
corrected and the world secured once for all against 
their recurrence. What we demand in this war, there- 
fore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. 

It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in ; 
and particularly that it be made safe for every peace- 
loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its 



214 Democracy Today 

own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of 
justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the 
world as against force and selfish aggression. 

All the peoples of the world are in effect partners, 
in this interest, and for our own part we see very 
clearly that unless justice be done to others it will not 
be done to us. 

The program of the world's peace, therefore, is our 
program, and that program, the only possible pro- 
gram, as we see it, is this : 

I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after 
which there shall be no private international under- 
standings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed 
always frankly and in the public view. 

II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, 
outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, 
except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part, 
by international action for the enforcement of inter- 
national covenants. 

III. The removal, so far as possible,- of all economic 
barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade 
conditions among all the nations consenting to the 
peace and associating themselves for its maintenance. 

IV. Adequate guaranties given and taken that na- 
tional armaments will be reduced to the lowest point 
consistent with domestic safety .^^ 

V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial 
adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict 
observance of the principle that in determining all 
such questions of sovereignty the interest of the popu- 
lations concerned must have equal weight with the- 



Program, of the World's Peace 215 

equitable claims of the government whose title is to be 
determined. 

VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and 
such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as 
will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other 
nations of the world in obtaining for her an unham- 
pered and unembarrassed opportunity for the inde- 
pendent determination of her own political develop- 
ment and national policy and assure her of a sincere 
welcome into the society of free nations under insti- 
tutions of her own choosing; and, more than a wel- 
come, assistance also of every kind that she may need 
and may herself desire. The treatment accorded 
Russia by her sister nations in the months to come 
will be the acid test of their good will, of their com- 
prehension of her needs as distinguished from their 
own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish 
sympathy. 

VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be 
evacuated and restored without any attempt to limit 
the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all 
other free nations. No other single act will serve as 
this will serve to restore confidence among the nations 
in the laws which they have themselves set and deter- 
mined for the government of their relations with one 
another. Without this healing act the whole structure 
and validity of international law is forever impaired. 

VIII. All French territory should be freed and the 
invaded portions restored and the wrong done to 
France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace- 
Lorraine^,^ which has unsettled the peace ot the world 



216 Democracy Today 

for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that 
peace may once more be made secure in the interest 
of all. 

13 

IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should 
be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nation- 
ality. 

X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place 
among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and 
assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of 
autonomous development.^* 

XI. Eoumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be 

15 

evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia ac- 
corded free and secure access to the sea ; and the rela- 
tions of the several Balkan states to one another deter- 
mined by friendly counsel along historically estab- 
lished lines of allegiance and nationality; and inter- 
national guaranties of the political and economic 
independence and territorial integrity of the several 
Balkan states should be entered into. 

XII. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman 
Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but 
the other nationalities which are now under Turkish 
rule should be assured an undoubted security of 
life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of 
autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should 
be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships 
and commerce of all nations under international 
guaranties. 

XIII. An independent Polish state^® should be 
erected which should include the territories inhab- 
ited by indisputably Polish populations, which should 



Program of the Woi^ld's Peace 217 

be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and 
whose political and economic independence and terri- 
torial integrity should be guaranteed by international 
covenant. 

XIV. A general association of nations must be 
formed under specific covenants for the purpose of 
affording mutual guaranties of political independence 
and territorial integrity to great and small states alike. 

In regard to these essential rectifications of wrong 
and assertions of right we feel ourselves to be inti- 
mate partners of all the governments and peoples 
associated together against the imperialists. We can 
not be separated in interest or divided in purpose. 
We stand together until the end. 

For such arrangements and covenants we are willing 
to fight and to continue to fight until they are achieved ; 
but only because we wish the right to prevail and 
desire a just and stable peace such as can be secured 
only by removing the chief provocations to war, which 
this program does remove. 

We have no jealousy of German greatness and there 
is nothing in this program that impairs it. We grudge 
her no achievement or distinction of learning or of 
pacific enterprise such as have made her record very 
bright and very enviable. We do not wish to injure 
her or to block in any way her legitimate influence or 
power. We do not wish to fight her either with arms 
or with hostile arrangements of trade, if she is willing 
to associate herself with us and the other peace-loving 
nations of the world in covenants of justice and law 
and fair dealing. We wish her only to accept a place 



218 Democracy Today 

of equality among the peoples of the world — the new 
world in which we now live — instead of a place of 
mastery. 

Neither do we presume to suggest to her any altera- 
tion or modification of her institutions. But it is 
necessary, we must frankly say, and necessary as a 
preliminary to any intelligent dealings with her on our 
part, that we should know whom her spokesmen speak 
for when they speak to us, whether for the reichstag 
majority or for the military party and the men whose 
creed is imperial domination. 

We have spoken now, surely, in terms too concrete 
to admit of any further doubt or question. 

An evident principle runs through the whole pro- 
gram I have outlined. It is the principle of justice to 
all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live 
on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, 
whether they be strong or weak. Unless this principle 
be made its foundation no part of the structure of 
international justice can stand. The people of the 
United States could act upon no other principle, and 
to the vindication of this principle they are ready to 
devote their lives, their honor, and everything that 
they possess. The moral climax of this, the culminating 
and final war for human liberty, has come, and they 
are ready to put their strength, their own highest 
purpose, their own integrity, and devotion to the test. 



ADDRESS TO CONGRESS 
WooDROw Wilson 

[speech delivered before congress 
february 11, 1918] 

On the 8th of January I had the honor of address- 
ing you on the objects of the war as our people con- 
ceive them. The prime minister of Great Britain had 
spoken in similar terms on the 5th of January. 

To these addresses the German chancellor replied 
on the 24th, and Count Czernin for Austria on the 
same day. It is gratifying to have our desire so 
promptly realized that all exchanges of view on this 
great matter should be made in the hearing of all the 
world. 

Count Czernin 's reply, which is directed chiefly to 
my own address on the 8th of January, is uttered in 
a very friendly tone.^ He finds in my statement a 
sufficiently encouraging approach to the views of his 
own government to justify him in believing that it 
furnishes a basis for a more detailed discussion of pur- 
poses by the two governments. 

He is represented to have intimated that the views 
he was expressing had been communicated to me be- 
forehand and that I was aware of them at the time 
he was uttering them ; but in this I am sure he was 
misunderstood. I had received no intimation of what 
he intended to say. There was, of course, no reason 

219 



220 Democracy Today 

wliy he should communicate privately with me.^ I am 
content to be one of his public audience. 

Count von Hertling's reply is, I must say, very 
vague and very confusing. It is full of equivocal 
phrases and leads it is not clear where. But it is cer- 
tainly in a very different tone from that of Count 
Czernin and apparently of an opposite purpose. It 
confirms, I am sorry to say, rather than removes, the 
unfortunate impression made hy what we had learned 
of the conferences at Brest-Litovsk.^ 

His discussion and acceptance of our general prin- 
ciples lead him to no practical conclusions. He re- 
fuses to apply them to the substantive items which 
must constitute the body of any final settlement. He is 
jealous of international action and of international 
counsel. 

He accepts, he says, the principle of public diplo- 
macy, but he appears to insist that it be confined, at 
any rate in this case, to generalities and that the sev- 
eral particular questions of territory and sovereignty, 
the several questions upon whose settlement must de- 
pend the acceptance of peace by the twenty-three 
states now engaged in the war, must be discussed and 
settled, not in general council, but severally by the 
nations most immediately concerned by interest or 
neighborhood. 

He agrees that the seas should be free, but looks 
askance at any limitation to that freedom by interna- 
tional action in the interest of the common order. He 
would without reserve be glad to see economic barriers 
removed between nation and nation, for that could in 



Address to Congress 221 

no way impede the ambitions of the military Darty 
with whom he seems constrained to keep on terms. 

Neither does he raise objection to a limitation of 
armaments. That matter will be settled of itself, he 
thinks, by the economic conditions which must follow 
the war. 

But the German colonies, he demands, must be re- 
turned without debate. He will discuss with no one 
but the representatives of Russia what dispositions 
shall be made of the peoples and the lands of the 
Baltic provinces; with no one but the government of 
France the "conditions" under which French terri- 
tory shall be evacuated, and only with Austria what 
shall be done with Poland. 

In the determination of all questions affecting the 
Balkan states he defers, as I understand him, to Aus- 
tria and Turkey; and with regard to the agreements 
to be entered into concerning the non-Turkish peoples 
of the present Ottoman empire to the Turkish authori- 
ties themselves. 

After a settlement all around, effected in this fash- 
ion by individual barter and concession, he would 
have no objection, if I correctly interpret his state- 
ment, to a league of nations which would undertake to 
hold the new balance of power steady against external 
disturbances. 

It must be evident to every one who understands 
what this war has wrought in the opinion and tem- 
per of the world that no general peace, no peace worth 
the infinite sacrifices of these years of tragical suffer- 
ing, can possibly be arrived at in any such fashion. 



222 Democracy Today 

The method the German chancellor proposes is the 
method of the congress of Vienna.'* We cannot and 
will not return to that. What is at stake now is the 
peace of the world. What we are striving for ,is a new J 
international order based upon broad and universal 
principles of right and justice — no mere peace of 
shreds and patches. 

Is it possible that Count von Hertling does not 
see that, does not grasp it, is in fact living in his 
thought in a world dead and gone? Has he utterly 
forgotten the reichstag resolutions of the 19th of July,'' 
or does he deliberately ignore them? They spoke of 
the conditions of a general peace, not of national ag- 
grandizement or of arrangements between state and •, 
state. 

The peace of the world depends upon the just set 
tlement of each of the several problems to which I 
adverted in my recent address to the congress, I, of 
course, do not mean that the peace of the world de- 1 
pends upon the acceptance of any particular set of 
suggestions as to the waj^ in which those problems are 
to be dealt with. I mean only that those problems 
each and all affect the whole world ; that unless they 
are dealt with in a spirit of unselfish and unbiased 
justice, with a view to the wishes, the natural con- 
nections, the racial aspirations, the security and peace 
of mind of the peoples involved, no permanent pea^e 
will have been attained. 

They cannot be discussed separately or in corners. 
None of them constitutes a private or separate inter- 
est from which the opinion of the world may be shut 



\ 



Address to Congress 223 

out. Whatever affects the peace affects mankind, and 
nothing settled by military force, if settled wrong, is 
settled at all. It will presently have to be reopened. 

Is Count von Hertling not aware that he is speaking 
in the court of mankind, that all the awakened nations 
of the world now sit in judgment on what every public 
man, of whatever nation, may say on the issues of a 
conflict which has spread to every region of the 
world ? 

The reichstag resolutions of July themselves frank- 
ly accepted the decisions of that court. There shall be 
no annexations, no contributions, no punitive dam- 
ages. Peoples are not to be handed about from one 
sovereignty to another by an international conference 
or an understanding between rivals and antagonists. 

National aspirations must be respected, peoples 
m^y now be dominated and governed only by their 
own consent. "Self determination" is not a mere 
phrase. It is an imperative principle of action, which 
statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril. 

We cannot have general peace for the asking, or by 
the mere arrangements of a peace conference. It can- 
not be pieced together out of individual understand- 
ings between powerful states. All the parties to this 
war must join in the settlement of every issue any- 
where involved in it because what we are seeking is a 
peace that we can all unite to guarantee and maintain 
^nd every item of it must be submitted to the common 
judgment whether it be right and fair, an act of jus- 
tice, rather than a bargain between sovereigns. 

The United States has no desire to interfere in Eu- 



224 Democracy Today 

ropean affairs or to act as arbiter in European terri- 
torial disputes/ We would disdain to take advantage 
of any internal weakness or disorder to impose our 
own will upon another people. She is quite ready to 
be shown that the settlements she has suggested are 
not the best or the most enduring. They are only her 
own provisional sketch of principles, and of the way 
in which they should be applied. 

But she entered this war because she was made a 
partner, whether she would or not, in the sufferings 
and indignities inflicted by the military masters of 
Germany against the peace and security of mankind ; 
and the conditions of peace will touch her as nearly 
as they will touch any other nation to which is in- 
trusted a leading part in the maintenance of civiliza- 
tion. 

She cannot see her way to peace until the causes of 
this war are removed, its renewal rendered as nearly 
as may be impossible. 

This war had its roots in the disregard of the rights 
of small nations and of nationalities which lacked the 
union and the force to make good their claim to deter- 
mine their own allegiances and their own forms of 
political life. Covenants must now be entered into 
which will render such things impossible for the fu- 
ture; and those covenants must be backed by the 
united force of all the nations that love justice and 
are willing to maintain it at any cost. 

If territorial settlements and the political relations 
of great populations which have not the organized 
power to resist are to be determined by the contracts 



Address to Congress 225 

of the powerful governments which consider them- 
selves most directly affected, as Count von Hertling 
proposes, why may not economic questions also? 

It has come about in the altered world in which we 
now find ourselves that justice and the rights of peo- 
ples affect the whole field of international dealing as 
much as access to raw materials and fair and equal 
conditions of trade. 

Count von Hertling wants the essential bases of 
commercial and industrial life to be safeguarded by 
common agreement and guarantee, but he cannot ex- 
pect that to be conceded him if the other matters to 
be determined by the articles of peace are not handled 
in the same way as items in the final accounting. He 
cannot ask the benefit of common agreement in' the 
one field without according it in the other. 

I take it for granted that he sees that separate and 
selfish compacts with regard to trade and the essential 
materials of manufacture would afford no foundation 
for peace. Neither, he may rest assured, will separate 
and selfish compacts with regard to provinces and 
peoples. 

Count Czernin seems to see the fundamental ele- 
ments of peace with clear eyes and does not seek to 
obscure them. He sees that an independent P.oland,' 
made up of all the indisputably Polish peoples who 
lie contiguous to one another, is a matter of European 
concern and must, of course, be conceded; that Bel- 
gium must be evacuated and restored, no matter what 
sacrifices and concessions that may involve ; and that 
national aspirations must be satisfied, even within his 



226 Democracy Today 

own empire, in the common interest of Europe and 
mankind. 

If he is silent about questions which touch the inter- 
est and purpose of his allies more nearly than they 
touch those of Austria only, it must of course be be- 
cause he feels constrained, I suppose, to defer to Ger- 
many and Turkey in the circumstances. 

Seeing and conceding, as he does, the essential prin- 
ciples involved and the necessity of candidly applying 
them, he naturally feels that Austria can respond to 
the purpose of peace as expressed by the United States 
with less embarrassment than could Germany. He 
probably would have gone much further had it not 
been for the embarrassments of Austria's alliances 
and of her dependence upon Germany. i 

After all, the test of whether it is possible for either 
government to go any further in this comparison of 
views is simple and obvious. The principles to be ap- 
plied are these : 

First — That each part of the final settlement must 
be based upon the essential justice of that particular 
cause and upon such adjustments as are most likely 
to bring a peace that will be permanent. 

Second — That peoples and provinces are not to be 
bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if 
they were mere chattels and pawns in a game, even 
the great game, now forever discredited, of the bal- 
ance of power ; but that. 

Third — Every territorial settlement involved in 
this war must be made in the interest and for the 
benefit of the populations concerned, and not as a part 



Address to Congr^ess 227 

of any mere adjustment or compromise of claim? 
among rival states; and. 

Fourth — That all well defined national aspirations 
shall be accorded the utmost satisfaction that can be 
accorded them without introducing new or perpetuat- 
ing old elements of discord and antagonism that would 
be likely in time to break the peace of Europe and 
consequently of the world. 

A general peace erected on such foundations can 
be discussed. Until such a peace can be secured we 
have no choice but to go on.* So far as we can judge, 
these principles that we regard as fundamental are 
already everywhere accepted as imperative, except 
among the spokesmen of the military and annexation- 
ist party in Germany. If they have anywhere else 
been rejected the objectors have not been sufficiently 
numerous or influential to make their voices audible. 

The tragical circumstance is that this one party in 
Germany is apparently willing and able to send mil- 
lions of men to their death to prevent what all the 
world now sees to be just. 

I would not be a true spokesman of the people of the 
United States if I did not say once more that we en- 
tered this war upon no small occasion and that we 
never can turn back from a course chosen upon prin- 
ciple. 

Our resources are in part mobilized now and we 
shall not pause until they are mobilized in their en- 
tirety. Our armies are rapidly going to the fighting 
front and will go more and more rapidly. Our whole 
strength will be put into this war of emancipation — 



228 Democracy Today 

emancipation from the threat and attempted mastery 
of selfish groups of autocratic rulers — whatever the 
difficulties and present partial delays. 

We are indomitable in our power of independent 
action and can in no circumstances consent to live in 
a world governed by intrigue and force. We believe 
that our own desire for a new international order 
under which reason and justice and the common inter- 
ests of mankind shall prevail is the desire of enlight- 
ened men everywhere. Without that new order the 
world v/ill be without peace, and human life will lack 
tolerable conditions of existence and development. 
Having set our hand to the task of achieving it we 
shall not turn back. 

I hope that it is not necessary for me to add that no 
word of what I have said is intended as a threat. That 
is not the temper of our people. I have spoken thus 
only that the whole world may know the true spirit of 
America — that men everywhere may know that our 
passion for justice and for self-government is no mere 
passion of words, but a passion which, once set in ac- 
tion, must be satisfied. The power of the United 
States is a menace to no nation or people. It will never 
be used in aggression or for the aggrandizement of any 
selfish interest of our own. It springs out of freedom 
and is for the service of freedom. 



THE END OF SELFISH DOMINION 
WooDROw Wilson 

[address delivered at BALTIMORE^ APRIL 6, 1918] 

This is the anniversary of our acceptance of Germany's 
challenge to fight for our right to live and be free, and 
for the sacred rights of freemen everywhere.^ The nation 
is awake. There is no need to call to it. We know what 
the war must cost, our utmost sacrifice, the lives of our 
fittest men and, if need be, all that we possess. 

The loan^ we are met to discuss is one of the least parts 
of what we are called upon to give and to do, though in 
itself imperative. The people of the whole country are 
alive to the necessity of it, and are ready to lend to the 
utmost, even where it involves a sharp skimping and 
daily sacrifice to lend out of meager earnings. They 
will look with reprobation and contempt upon those who 
can and will not, upon those who demand a higher rate 
of interest, upon those who think of it as a mere com- 
mercial transaction. I have not come, therefore, to urge 
the loan. I have come only to give you, if I can, a more 
vivid conception of what it is for. 

The reason for this great war, the reason why it had 
to come, the need to fight it through, and the issues that 
hang upon its outcome, are more clearly disclosed now 
than ever before. It is easy to see just what this particu- 
lar loan means, because the cause we are fighting for 
stands more sharply revealed than at any previous crisis 
of the momentous struggle. The man who knows least 

229 



230 Democracy Today 

can new see plainly how the cause of justice stands, and 
what the imperishable tiling he is asked to invest in is. 
Men in America may be more sure than they ever were 
before that the cause is their own, and that, if it should 
be lost, their own great nation's place and mission in the 
world would be lost with it. 

I call you to witness, my fellow-countrymen, that at no 
stage of this terrible business have I judged the purposes 
of German}^ intemperately. I would be ashamed in the 
presence of affairs so grave, so fraught with the destinies 
of mankind throughout all the world, to speak with 
truculence, to use the weak language of hatred or vin- 
dictive purpose. We must judge as we would be judged. 
I have sought to learn the objects Germany has in this 
war from the mouths of her own spokesmen, and to deal 
frankly with them as I wished them to deal with me. 
I have laid bare our own ideals, our own purposes, with- 
out reserve or doubtful phrase, and have asked them to 
say as plainly what it is that they seek. 

We have ourselves proposed no injustice, no aggression. 
We are ready, whenever the final reckoning is made, to 
l3e just to the German people, deal fairly with the Ger- 
man power, as with all others. There can be no differ- 
ence between the peoples in the final judgment, if it is 
indeed to be a righteous judgment. To propose anything 
hut justice, even-handed and dispassionate justice, to 
Germany at any time, whatever the outcome of the war, 
Avould be to renounce and dishonor our cause, for we ask 
nothing that we are not willing to accord. 

It has been with this thought that I have sought to 
learn from those who spoke for Germany whether it was 






The End of Selfish Dominion 231 

justice or dominion anj the execution of their own will 
upon the other nations of the world that the German 
leaders were seeking. The}^ have answered — answered in 
unmistakable terms, l^liey have avowed that it was not 
justice, but dominion and the unhindered execution of 
their own wdll. The avowal has not come from Ger- 
many's statesmen.. It has come from her military leaders, 
who are her real rulers. Her statesmen have said that 
they wished peace, and were ready to discuss its terms 
whenever their opponents were willing to sit down at the 
conference table w4th them.^ Her present Chancellor has 
said — in indefinite and uncertain terms, indeed, and in 
phrases that often seem to deny their own meaning, but 
with as much plainness as he thought prudent — that he 
believed that peace should be based upon the principles 
which we had declared would be our own in the final 
settlement.* 

At Brest-Litovsk her civilian delegates spoke in simi- 
lar terms ; professed their desire to conclude a fair peace 
and accord to the peoples with whose fortunes they were 
dealing the right to choose their own allegiances. But 
action accompanied and followed the profession. Their 
military masters, the men who act for Germany and 
exhibit her purpose in execution, proclaimed a very dif- 
ferent conclusion. We cannot mistake what they have 
done — in Eussia, in Finland, in the Ukraine, in Eou- 
mania.^ The real test of their justice and fair play has 
come. From this we may judge the rest. 

They are enjoying in Russia a cheap triumph in which 
no brave or gallant nation can long take pride. A great 
people, helpless by their own act, lies for the time at their 



232 Democracy Today 

mercy. Their fair professions are forgotten. They 
nowhere set np justice, but ever^^where impose their 
power and exploit everything for their own use and 
aggrandizement, and the peoples of conquered provinces 
are invited to be free under their dominion ! 

Are we not justified in believing that they would do the 
same things at their western front if they were not there 
face to face with armies whom even their countless divi- 
sions cannot overcome? If, when they have felt their 
check to be final, they should propose favorable and 
equitable terms with regard to Belgium and France and 
Italy, could they blame us if we concluded that they did 
so only to assure themselves of a free hand in Eussia and 
the East? 

Their purpose is, undoubtedly, to make all the Slavic 
peoples, all the free and ambitious nations of the Balkan 
Peninsula, all the lands that Turkey has dominated and 
misruled, subject to their will and ambition, and build 
upon that dominion an empire of force upon which they 
fancy that they can. then erect an empire of gain and 
commea'cial supremacy — an empire as hostile to the 
Americas as to the Europe which it will overawe — an 
empire which will ultimately master Persia, India, and 
the peoples of the Far East. 

In such a program our ideals, the ideals of justice and 
humanity and liberty, the principle of the free self- 
determination of nations, upon which all the modern 
world insists, can play no part. They are rejected for the 
ideals of power, for the principle that the strong must 
rule the weak, that trade must follow the flag, whetlier 
those to whom it is taken welcome it or not, that the 



Tlie End of Selfish Dominion 233 

peoples of the world are to be made subject to the pat- 
ronage and overlordship of those who have the power to 
enforce it. 

That program once carried out, America and all who 
care or dare to stand with her must arm and prepare 
themselves to contest the mastery of the world — a mas- 
tery in which the rights of common men, the rights of 
women and of all who are weak, must for the time being 
be trodden underfoot and disregarded and the old, age- 
long struggle for freedom and right begin again at its 
beginning. Everything that America has lived for and 
loved and grown great to vindicate and bring to a glori- 
ous realization will have fallen in utter ruin and the gates 
of mercy once more pitilessly shut upon mankind ! 

The thing is preposterous and impossible; and yet is 
not that what the whole course and action of the German 
armies has meant wherever they have moved ? I do not 
wish, even in this moment of utter disillusionment, to 
judge harshly or unrighteously. I judge only what the 
German arms have accomplished with unpitying thor- 
oughness throughout every fair region they have touched. 

What, then, are we to do? For myself, I am ready, 
ready still, ready even now, to discuss a fair and just and 
honest peace at any time that it is sincerely proposed — a 
peace in which the strong and the weak shall fare alike. 
But the answer, when I proposed such a peace,^ came 
from the German commanders in Russia"^ and I cannot 
mistake the meaning of the answer. 

I accept the challenge. I know that you accept it. 
All the world shall know that you accept it. It shall 
appear in the utter sacrifice and self-forgetfulness with 



234 Democracy Today 

which we shall give all that we love and all that we have 
to redeem the world and make it fit for free men like 
ourselves to live in. This now is the meaning of all that 
we do. Let everything that we say, my fellow country- 
men, everything that we henceforth plan and accomplish, 
ring true to this response till the majesty and might of 
our concerted power shall fill the thought and utterly 
defeat the force of those who flout and misprize what we 
honor and hold dear. 

Germany has once more said that force, and force 
alone, shall decide whether justice and peace shall reign 
in the affairs of men, whether right as America conceives 
it or dominion as she conceives it shall determine the 
destinies of mankind. There is, therefore, but one 
response possible from us : Force, force to the utmost, 
force without stint or limit, the righteous and trium- 
phant force which shall make right the law of the world 
and cast every selfish dominion down in the dust. 



THE MOUNT VEENOlSr ADDRESS 
WooDROw Wilson 

[address delivered at the grave of WASHINGTON^ 
JULY -i, 1918] 

I am liapp}^ to draw apart with you to this quiet place 
of old counsel in order to speak a little of the meaning 
of this day of our nation's independence. The place 
seems very still and remote. It is as serene and un- 
touched by the hurry of the world as it was in those 
great days long ago when General Washington was here 
and held leisurely conference with the men who were to be 
associated with him in the creation of a nation. From 
these gentle slopes they looked out upon the world and saw 
it whole, saw it with the light of the future upoji it, saw 
it with modern eyes that turned away from a past which 
men of liberated spirits could no longer endure. It is 
for that reason that we cannot feel, even here, in the 
immediate presence of this sacred tomb, that this is a 
place of death. It was a place of achievement. A great 
promise that was meant for all mankind was here given 
plan and reality. The associations by which we are here 
surrounded are the inspiriting associations of that noble 
death which is only a glorious consummation. From 
this green hillside we also ought to be able to see with 
comprehending eyes the world that lies around us and 
conceive anew the purpose that must set men free. 

It is significant — significant of their own character 
and purpose and of the influences they were setting afoot 

235 



236 Democracy Today 

— that Washington and his associates, like the Barons 
at Ennnymede/ spoke and acted, not for a class, but 
for a people. It has been left for ns to see to it that 
it shall be understood that they spoke and acted, not for 
a single people only, but for all mankind. They were 
thinking not of themselves and of the material interests 
which centered in the little groups of landholders and 
merchants and men of affairs with whom they were 
accustomed to act, in Virginia and the colonies to the 
north and south of her, but of a people which wished 
to be done with classes and special interests and the 
authority of men whom they had not themselves chosen 
to rule over them. They entertained no private pur- 
pose, desired no peculiar privilege. They were con- 
sciously planning that men of every class should be 
.free and America a place to which men out of every 
nation might resort who wished to share with" them the 
rights and privileges of free men. And we take our 
cue from them — do we not? We intend what they in- 
tended. We here in America believe our participation 
in the present Avar to be only the fruitage of what they 
planted. Our case differs from theirs only in this, that 
it is our inestimable privilege to concert with men out 
of every nation who shall make not only the liberties of 
America secure but the liberties of every other people as 
well. We are happy in the thought that we are per- 
mitted to do what they would have done had they been 
in our place. There must now be settled, once for all, 
what was settled for America in the great age upon 
whose inspiration we draw today. This is surely a fit- 
ting place from which calmly to look out upon our task, 



The Mount Vernon Address 23? 

that we may fortify our spirits for its accomplishment. 
And this is the appropriate place from which to avow, 
alike to the friends who look on^ and to the friends with 
whom we have the happiness to be associated in action, 
the faith and purpose with which we act. 

This, then, is our conception of the great struggle in 
which we are engaged. The plot is written plain upon 
every scene and every act of the supreme tragedy. On 
the one hand stand the peoples of the world — not only 
the peoples actually engaged, but many others, also, who 
suffer under mastery but cannot act; peoples of many 
races and in every part of the world— the people of 
stricken Eussia still among the rest, though they are for 
the moment unorganized and helpless.. Opposed to 
them, masters of many armies, stand an isolated^ friend- 
less group of Governments, who speak no common pur- 
pose, but only selfish ambitions of their own, by which 
none can profit but themselves, and whose peoples are 
fuel in their hands; Governments which fear their 
people, and yet are for the time being sovereign lords, 
making every choice for them and disposing of their 
lives and fortunes as they will, as well as of the lives 
and fortunes of every people who fall under their power 
—Governments clothed with the strange trappings and 
the primitive authority of an age that is altogether alien 
and hostile to our own. The Past and the Present are 
in -deadly grapple, and the peoples of the world are 
being done to death between them. 

There can be but one issue. The settlement must be 
final. There can be no compromise. No halfway de- 
cision would be tolerable. Nq halfway decision is con- 



238 Democracy Today 

ceivable. These are the ends for which the associated 
peoples of the world are fighting and which must be 
conceded them before there can be peace : 

I. The destruction of every arbitrary power anywhere 
that can separately, secretly, and of its single choice 
disturb the peace of the world; or, if it cannot be pres- 
ently destroyed, at the least its reduction . to virtual 
impotence.^ 

II. The settlement of every question, whether of ter- 
ritory, of sovereignty, of economic arrangement, or of 
political relationship^ upon the basis of the free accept- 
ance of that settlement by the people immediately con- 
cerned, and not upon the basis of the material interest 
or advantage of any other, nation or people which may 
desire a different settlement for the sake of its own 
exterior influence or mastery. 

III. The consent of all nations to be governed in their 
conduct toward each other by the same principles of 
honor and of respect for the common law of civilized 
society that govern the individual citizens of all modem 
States in their relations with one another; to the end 
that all promises and covenants may be sacredly ob- 
served, no private plots or conspiracies hatched, no sel- 
fish injuries wrought with impunity, and a mutual trust 
established upon the handsome foundation of a mutual 
respect for right. 

IV. The establishment of an organization of peace 
which shall make it certain that the combined power of 
free nations will check every invasion of right and serve 
to make peace and justice the more secure by affording 
a definite tribunal of opinion to which all must submit 



Tlie Mount Vernon Address 239 

and by which every international readjustment that can- 
not be amicably agreed upon by the peoples directly 
concerned shall be sanctioned.* 

These great objects can be put into a single sentence. 
What we seek is the reign of law, based upon the con- 
sent of the governed and sustained by the organized 
opinion of mankind. 

These great ends cannot be achieved by debating and 
seeking to reconcile and accommodate what statesmen 
may wish with their projects for balances of power and 
of national opportunity. They can be realized only by 
tlie determination of what the thinking peoples of the 
\vorld desire, with their longing hope for justice and for 
social freedom and opportunity. 

I can fancy that the air of this place carries the ac- 
cents of such principles with a peculiai kindness. Hero 
were started forces which the great nation against which 
tlicy were primarily directed at first regarded as a revolt 
against its rightful authority, but which it has long 
since seen to have been a step in the liberation of its 
own people as well as of the people of the United States ; 
and I stand here now to speak — speak proudly and with 
confident hope — of the spread of this revolt, this libera- 
tion, to the great stage of the world itself ! The blinded 
rulers of Prussia have roused forces they know little of 
— forces which, once roused, can never be crushed to 
earth again ; for they have at their heart an inspiration 
and a purpose which are deathless and of the very stuff 
of triumph ! 



PEACE WITH JUSTICE 

WooDROw Wilson 

[address delivered at the opening of the campaign 

FOR the fourth LIBERTY LOAN AT THE METRO'POLITAN 
OPERA HOUSE, NEW YORK CITY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1918.1 

I am not here to promote the ioaiT,. That will be done 
— ably and enthusiastically done — by the hundreds of 
thousands of loyal and tireless men and women who have 
undertaken to present it to you and to our fellow citizens 
throughout the country; and I have not the least doubt 
of their complete success; for I know their spirit and 
the spirit of the country. My confidence is confirmed, 
too, by the thoughtful and experienced co-operation of 
the bankers here and everywhere, who are lending their 
invaluable aid and guidance.^ I have come, rather, to 
seek an opportunity to present to you some thoughts 
which I trust will serve to give you, in perhaps fuller 
measure than before, a vivid sense of the great issues 
involved, in order that you may appreciate and accept 
with added enthusiasm the grave significance of the 
duty of supporting the Government by your men and 
your means to the utmost point of sacrifice and self- 
denial. No man or woman who has really taken in 
what this war means can hesitate to give to the very 
limit of what they have; and it is my mission here to- 
night to try to make it clear once more what the war 
really means. You will need no other stimulation or 
reminder of your duty. 

240 



Peace With Justice 341 

At every turn of the war we gain a fresh conscious- 
ness of what we mean to accomplish by it. When our 
hope and expectation are most excited we think more 
definitely than before of the issues that hang upon it 
and of the purposes which must be realized by means of 
it. For it has positive and well-defined purposes which 
we did not determine and which we cannot alter. No 
statesman or assembly created them; no statesman or 
assembly can alter them. They have arisen out of the 
very nature and circumstances of the war. The most 
that statesmen or assemblies can do is to carry them out 
or be false to them. They were perhaps not clear at the 
outset ; but they are clear now. The war has lasted more 
than four years and the whole world has been drawn 
into it. The common will of mankind has been sub- 
stituted for the particular purposes of individual States. 
Individual statesmen may have started the conflict, but 
neither they nor their opponents can stop it as they 
please. It has become a people's war, and peoples of all 
sorts and races, of every degree of power and variety of 
fortune, are involved in its sweeping processes of change 
and settlement. We came into it when its character had 
become fully defined and it was plain that no action 
could stand apart or be indifferent to its outcome. Its 
challenge drove to the heart of everything we cared for 
and lived for. The voice of the war had become clear 
and gripped our hearts. Our brothers from many lands, 
as well as our own murdered dead under the sea, were 
calling to us^ and we responded, fiercely and of course. 

The air was clear about us. We saw things in their 
full, convincing proportions as they were; and we have 



24:2 Democracy Today 

seen them with steady eyes and unchanging comprehen- 
sion ever since. We accepted the issues of the war as 
facts, not as any group of men either here or elsewhere 
had defined them, and we can accept no outcome which 
does not squarely meet and settle them. Those issues 
■are these : 

Shall the military power of any nation or group of 
nations be suffered to determine the fortunes of peoples 
over whom they have no right to rule except the right 
of force? 

Shall strong nations be free to wrong weak nations 
and make them subject to their purpose and interest? 

Shall peoples be ruled and dominated, even m their 
•own internal affairs, by arbitrary and irresponsible force 
or by their ov/n will and choice? 

Shall there be a common standard of right and privi- 
lege for all peoples and nations, or shall the strong do 
as they will and the weak suffer without redress? 

Shall the assertion of right be haphazard and by casual 
alliance or shall there be a common concert to oblige 
the observance of common rights? 

ISTo man, no group of men, chose these to be the issues 
of the struggle. They are the issues of it ; and they must 
be settled — by no arrangement or compromise or adjust- 
ment of interests, but definitely and once for all and 
with a full and unequivocal acceptance of the principle 
that the interest of the weakest is as sacred as the inter- 
est of the strongest. 

This is what we mean when we speak of a permanent 
peace, if we speak sincerely, intelligently, and with a 



Peace With Justice 243 

real knowledge and comprehension of the matter we 
deal with. 

We are all agreed that there can be no peace obtained 
by any kind of bargain or compromise with the Govern- 
ments of the Central Empires, because we have dealt 
with them already and have seen them deal with other 
Governments that were parties to this struggle, at Brest- 
Litovsk^ and Bucharest.^ They have convinced ns that 
they are without honor and do not intend justice. They 
observe no covenants, accept no principle but force and 
their own interest. We cannot "come to terms" with 
them.* They have made it impossible. The German 
people must by this time be fully aware that we cannot 
accept the word of those who forced this war upon us. 
We do not think the same thoughts or speak the same 
language of agreement. 

It is of capital importance that we should also be 
explicitly agreed that no peace shall be obtained by any 
kind of compromise or abatement of the principles we 
have avowed as the principles for which we are fighting. 
There should exist no doubt about that. I am, therefore, 
going to take the liberty of speaking with the utmost 
frankness about the practical implications that are in- 
volved in it. 

If it be in deed and in truth the common object of 
the Governments associated against Germany and of the 
nations whom they govern, as I believe it to be, to achieve 
by the coming settlements a secure and lasting peace, 
it will be necessary that all who sit down at the peace 
table shall come ready and willing to pay the price, the 
only price, that will procure it; and ready and willing, 



244 Democracy Today 

also, to create in some virile fashion the only instrn- 
nientality by which it can be made certain that the 
agreements of the peace will be honored and fulfilled. 

That price is impartial justice in every item of the 
settlement, no matter whose interest is crossed; and not 
only impartial justice, but also the satisfaction of the 
several peoples whose fortunes are dealt with. That 
indispensable instrumentality is a League of Nations/ 
formed under covenants that will be efficacious. With- 
out such an instrumentality, by which the peace of the 
world can be guaranteed, peace will rest in part upon 
the word of outlaws, and only upon that word. For 
Germany will have to redeem her character, not by what 
happens at the peace table, but by what follows. 

And, as I see it, the constitution of that League of 
Nations and the clear definition of its objects must be 
a part, is in a sense the most essential part, of the peace 
settlement itself. It cannot be formed now. If formed 
now, it would be merely a new alliance confined to the 
nations associated against a common enemy. It is not 
likely that it could be formed after the settlement. It 
is necessary to guarantee the peace ; and the peace can- 
not be guaranteed as an afterthought. The reason, to 
speak in plain terms again^ why it must be guaranteed 
is that there will be parties to the peace whose promises 
have proved untrustworthy, and means must be found 
in connection with the peace settlement itself to remove 
that source of insecurity. It would be folly to leave 
the guarantee to the subsequent voluntary action of the 
Governments we have seen destroy Eussia and deceive 
Eoumania. 



Peace ^Y^tll Justice 245 

But these general terms do not disclose the whole 
matter. Some details are needed to make them sound 
less like a thesis and more like a practical program. 
These, then, are some of the particulars, and I state 
them with the greater confidence because I can state 
them authoritatively as representing this Government's 
interpretation of its own duty with regard to peace : 

1. The impartial justice meted out must involve no 
discrimination between those to whom we wish to be 
just and those to whom we do not wish to be just. It 
must' be a justice that plays no favorites and knows no 
standard but the equal rights of the several peoples 
concerned. 

2. JSTo special or separate interest of any single nation 
or any group of nations can be made the basis of any 
part of the settlement which is not consistent with the 
common interest of all. 

3. There can be no league or alliances or special cove- 
nants and understandings within the general and com- 
mon family of the League of Nations. 

4. And more specifically, there can be no special, sel- 
fish economic combinations within the league and no 
employment of any form of economic boycott or exclu- 
sion except as the power of economic penalty by exclu- 
sion from the markets of the world may be vested in 
the League of Nations itself as a means of discipline 
and control. 

5. All international agreements and treaties of every 
kind must be made known in their entirety to the rest 
of the world. 

Special alliances and economic rivalries and hostilities 



246 Democracy Today 

have been the prolific source in the modern world of the 
plans and passions that produce war. It would be an 
insincere as well as an insecure peace that did not ex- 
clude them in definite and binding terms. 

The confidence with which I venture to speak for our 
people in t lese matters does not spring from our tradi- 
tions merely, and the well-known principles of inter- 
national action which we have always professed and 
followed. In the same sentence in which I say that the 
United States will enter into no special arrangements 
or understandings with particular nations let me say 
also that the United States is prepared to assume its 
full share of responsibility for the maintenance of the 
common covenants and understandings upon which peace 
must henceforth rest. We still read Washington's im- 
mortal warning against "entangling alliances" with full 
comprehension and an unswerving purpose. But only 
special and limited alliances entangle ; and we recognize 
and accept the duty of a new day in which we are per- 
mitted to hope for a general alliance which will avoid 
entanglements and clear the air of the world for com- 
mon understandings and the maintenance of common 
rights. 

I have made this analysis of the international situation 
which the war has created, not, of course, because I 
doubted whether the leaders of the great nations and 
peoples with whom we are associated were of the same 
mind and entertained a like purpose, but because the 
air every now and again gets darkened by mists and 
groundless doubtings and mischievous perversions of 
counsel, and it is necessary once and again to sweep all 



Peace With Justice 247 

the irresponsible talk about peace intrigues and weaken- 
ing morale and doubtful purpose on the part of those 
in authority utterly, and if need be unceremoniously, 
aside and say things in the plainest words that can be 
found, even when it is only to say over again what has 
been said before, quite as plainly if in less unvarnished 
terms. 

As I have said, neither I nor any other man in gov- 
ernmental authority created or gave form to the issues 
of this war. I have simply responded to them with such 
vision as I could command. But I have responded gladly 
and with a resolution that has grown warmer and more 
confident as the issues have grown clearer and clearer. 
It is now plain that they are issues which no man can 
pervert unless it be wilfully. I am bound to fight for 
them, and happy to fight for them as time and circum- 
stance have revealed them to me as to all the world. Our 
enthusiasm for them grows more and more irresistible 
as they stand out in more and more vivid and unmis- 
takable outline. 

And the forces that fight for them draw into closer 
and closer array, organize their millions into more and 
more unconquerable might, as they become more and 
more distinct to the thought and purpose of the peoples 
engaged. It is the peculiarity of this great war that 
while statesmen have seemed to cast about for definitions 
of their purpose, and have sometimes seemed to shift 
their ground and their point of view, the thought of the 
mass of men, whom statesmen are supposed to instruct 
and lead, has grown more and more unclouded, more and 
more certain of what it is that they are fighting for. 



248 Democracy Today 

National purposes have fallen more and more into the 
background and the common purpose of enlightened 
mankind has taken their place. The counsels of plain 
men have become on all hands more simple and straight- 
forward and more unified than the counsels of sophisti- 
cated men of affairs, who still retain the impression that 
they are playing a game of power and playing for high 
stakes. That is why I have said that this is a peoples' 
war^ not a statesmen's. Statesmen must follow the clari- 
fied common thought or be broken.^ 

I take that to be the significance of the fact that 
assemblies and associations of many kinds made up of 
plain workaday people have demanded, almost every 
time they came together, and are still demanding/ that 
the leaders of their Governments declare to them plainly 
what it is, exactly what it is, that they are seeking in 
this war, and what they think the items of the final 
settlement should be. They are not yet satisfied with 
what they have been told. They still seem to fear that 
they are getting what they ask for only in statesmen's 
terms — only in the terms of territorial arrangements and 
divisions of power, and not in terms of broad-visipned 
justice and rpercy and peace and the satisfaction of those 
deep-seated longings of oppressed and distracted men 
and women and enslaved peoples that seem to them the 
only things worth fighting a war for that engulfs the 
world. Perhaps statesmen have not always recognized 
this changed aspect of the whole world of policy and 
action. Perhaps they have not always spoken in direct 
reply to the questions asked because they did not know 
how searching those questions were and what sort of 
answers they demanded. 



Peace With Justice 2-19 

But I, for one^, am glad to attempt the answer again 
and again, in the hope that I may make it clearer and 
cleare-r that my one thought is to satisfy those who strug- 
gle in the ranks and are, perhaps above all others, en- 
titled to a reply whose meaning no one 'can have any 
excuse for misunderstanding, if he understands the 
language in which it is spoken or can get someone to 
translate it correctly into his own. And I believe that 
the leaders of the Governments with which we are asso- 
ciated will speak, as they have occasion, as plainly as I 
have tried to speak. I hope that they will feel free to 
say whether they think that I am in any degree mistaken 
in my interpretation of the issues involved or in my pur- 
pose with regard to the means by which a satisfactory 
settlement of those issues may be obtained. Unity of 
purpose and of counsel are as imperatively necessary in 
this war as was unity of command in the battlefield ; and 
with perfect unity of purpose and counsel will come 
assurance of complete victory. It can be had in no 
other way. "Peace drives" can be effectively neutralized 
and silenced only by showing that every victory of the 
nations associated against Germany brings the nations 
nearer the sort of peace which will bring security and 
reassurance to all peoples and make the recurrence of 
another such struggle of pitiless force and bloodshed 
forever impossible, and that nothing else can. Gennany 
is constantly intimating the "terms" she will accept; 
and always finds that the world does not want terms. 
It wishes the final triumph of justice and fair dealing. 



I 



ATTITUDE OF THE UNITED STATES TOWARD 

MEXICO 

WooDROw Wilson 

[address delivered at the white house to the 
mexican editors, june 7, 1918] 

Gentlemen, I have never received a group of men 
who were more welcome than you are, because it lias 
been one of my distresses during the period of my 
Presidency that the Mexican people did not more thor- 
oughly understand the attitude of the United States J 
toward Mexico/ I think I can assure you, and I hope 
you have had every evidence of the truth of my assur- 
ance, that that attitude is one of sincere friendship. And 
not merely the sort of friendship which prompts one 
not to do his neighbor any harm, but the sort of friend- 
ship which earnestly desires to do his neighbor service. 

My own policy, the policy of my own administration, 
toward Mexico was at every point based upon this prin- 
ciple, that the internal settlement of the affairs of Mex- 
ico was none of our business; that we had no right to 
interfere with or to dictate to Mexico in any particular 
with regard to her own affairs. Take one aspect of cur 
relations which at one time may have been difficult fo^- 
you to understand : When we sent troops into Mexico,^ 
our sincere desire was nothing else than to assist you to 
get rid of a man who was making the settlement of your 
affairs for the time being impossible. We had no desire 
to use our troops for any other purpose, and I was in 

250 



Attitude of the United States Tomard Mexico 251 

hopes that by assisting in that way and then immedi- 
ately withdrawing I might give substantial proof of the 
truth of the assurances that I had giyen your Government 
through President Carranza. ^ 

And at the present time it distresses me to learn that 
certain influences, which I assume to be German in their 
origin/ are trying to make a wrong impression through- 
out Mexico as to the purjjoses of the United States, 
and not only a wrong impression, but to give an abso- 
lutely untrue account of things that happen. You know 
the distressing things that have been happening just off 
our coasts. You know of the vessels that have been sunk. 
I yesterday received a quotation from a paper in Guada- 
lajara which stated that thirteen of our battleships had 
been sunk off the capes of the Chesapeake. You see how 
dreadful it is to have people so radically misinformed. 
It was added that our Navy Department was withholding 
the truth with regard to these sinkings. I have no doubt 
that the publisher of the paper published that in perfect 
innocence without intending to convey wrong impres- 
sions, but it is evident that allegations of that sort pro- 
ceed from those who wish to make trouble between 
Mexico and the United States. 

Now, gentlemen, for the time being, at any rate — and 
I hope it will not be a short time — the influence of the 
Ignited States is somewhat pervasive in the affairs of the 
world, and I believe that it is pervasive because the 
nations of the world which are less powerful than some 
of the greatest nations are coming to believe that cur 
sincere desire is to do disinterested servivce. We are the 
champions of those nations which have not had a military 



252 Democracy Today 

standing? which would enable them to comDete with the 
strongest nations in the world, and I look forward with 
pride to the time, which I hope will soon come, when we 
can give substantial evidence, not only that we do not 
want anything out of this war, but that we would not 
accept anything out of it, that it is absolutely a case of 
disinterested action. And if you will watch the attitude 
of our people, you will see that nothing stirs them so 
deeply as assurances that this war, so far as we are con- 
cerned, is for idealistic objects. One of the difficulties 
that I experienced during the first three years of the war 
— the years when the United States w^as not in the war — 
was in getting the foreign offices of European nations to 
believe that the United States was seeking nothing for 
herself, that her neutrality was not selfish, and that if 
she came in she would not come in to get anything sub- 
stantial out of the war^ any material object, any territory, 
or trade, or anything else of that sort. In some of the 
foreign offices there were men who personally knew me 
and they believed, I hope, that I was sincere in assuring 
them that our purposes were disinterested, but they 
thought that these assurances came from an academic 
gentleman removed from the ordinary sources of infor- 
mation and speaking the idealistic purposes of the clois- 
ter. They did not believe that I was speaking the real 
heart of the American people, and I knew ail along that 
I was. Now I believe that everybody who comes into 
contact with the American people knows that I am 
speaking their purposes. 

The other night in Xew York,* at the opening of the 
campaiofn for funds for our Eed Cross, I made an 



Attitude of the United States Toward Mexico 253 

address. I had not intended to refer to Russia, but I was 
speaking without notes, and in the course of what I said 
my own thought was led to Eussia, and I said that we 
meant to stand by Russia just as firmly as we would 
stand by France or England or any other of the allies. 
The audience to which I was speakijig was not an audi- 
ence from which I would have expected an enthusiastic 
response to that. It was rather too well dressed. It 
was not an audience, in other words, made of the class 
of people whom you would suppose to have the most 
intimate feeling for the sufferings of the ordinary man 
in Russia, but that audience jumped into the aisles, the 
whole audience rose to its feet, and nothing that I had 
said on that occasion aroused anything like the enthusi- 
asm that tliat single sentence aroused. Now, there is a 
sample, gentlemen... W»e can not make anything out of 
Russia. We can not make anything out of standing by 
Russia at this time — the most remote of the European 
nations, so far as we are concerned, the one with which 
we have had the least connections in trade and advantage 
— and yet the people of the United States rose to that 
suggestion as to no other that I made in that address. 
That is the heart of America, and we are ready to show 
you by any act of friendship that you may propose our 
real feelings toward Mexico. . 

Some of us, if I may say so privately, look back with 
regret upon some of the more ancient relations that we 
have had with Mexico long before our generation; and 
America, if I may so express it, would now feel ashamed 
to take advantage of a neighbor. So T hope that you can 
carry back to your homes something better than the 



254 Democracy Today 

assurances of words. You have had contact with our 
people. You know your own personal reception. You 
know how gladly we have opened to you the doors of 
every establishment ,that you wanted to see and have 
shown you just what we were doing, and I hope you 
have gained the right impression as to why we were 
doing it. We are doing it, gentlemen^ so that the world 
may never hereafter have to fear the only thing that any 
nation has to dread — the unjust and selfish aggression of 
another nation. Some time ago, as you probably all 
know, I proposed a sort of Pan-American agreement. I 
had perceived that one of the difficulties of our relation- 
ship with Latin America was this : The famous Monroe 
doctrine was adopted"^ without your consent, without the 
consent of any of the Central or South American States. 
If I may express it in the terms that we so often use 
in this country, we said, "We are going to be your big 
brother, whether you want us to be or not." We did not 
ask whether it was agreeable to you that we should be 
your big bi'other. We said we were going to be. Now, 
that was all very well so far as protecting you from 
aggression from the other side of the water was con- 
cerned, but there was nothing in it that protected you 
from aggression from us, and I have repeatedly seen 
the uneasy feeling on the part of representatives of the 
States of Central and South America that our self- 
appointed protection might be for our own benefit and 
our own interests and not for the interest of our neigh- 
bors. So I said, "Very well, let us make an arrangement 
by which we will give bond. Let us have a common 
guarantee, that all of us will sign, of political independ- 



Attitude of the United States Toward Mexico 255 

ence and territorial integrity. Let ns agree that if any 
one of us, the United States included, violates the 
political independence or the territorial integrity of any 
of the others, all the others will jump on her. I pointed 
out to some of the gentlemen who were less inclined to 
enter into this arrangement than others that that was in 
effect giving bonds on the part of the United States that 
we would enter into an arrangement by which you would 
be protected from us. 

Xow, that is the kind of agreement that will have to 
be the foundation of the future life of the nations of the 
world, gentlemen. The whole family of nations will 
have to guarantee to each nation that no nation shall 
violate its political independence or its territorial integ- 
rity. That is the basis, the only conceivable basis, for the 
future peace of the world, and I must admit that I was 
ambitious to have the States of the two continents of 
America show the way to the rest of the world as to how 
to make a basis of peace. Peace can come only by trust. 
As long as there is suspicion there is going to be misun- 
derstanding, and as long as there is misunderstanding 
there is going to be trouble. If you can once get a 
situation of trust, then you have got a situation of per- 
manent peace. Therefore, everyone of us, it seems to me, 
owes it as a patriotic duty to his own country to plant 
the seeds of trust and of confidence instead of the seeds 
of suspicion and variety of interest. That is the reason 
that I began by saying to you that I have not had the 
pleasure of meeting a group of men who were more 
welcome than you are, because you are our near neigh- 
bors. Suspicion on your part or misunderstanding on 



256 Democracy Today 

your part distresses us more than we would be distressed 
by similar feelings on the part of those less near by. 

When you reflect how wonderful a storehouse of treas- 
ure Mexico is, you can see how her future must depend 
upon peace and honor, so that nobody shall exploit her. 
It must depend upon every, nation that has any relations 
with her, and the citizens of any nation that has relations 
with her, keeping within the bounds of honor and fair 
dealing and justice, because so soon as you can admit 
your own capital and the capital of the world to the free 
use of the resources of Mexico, it mil be one of the 
most wonderfully rich and prosperous countries in the 
world. And when you have the foundations of estab- 
lished order, and the world has come to its senses again, 
we shall, I hope, have the very best connections that will 
assure us all a permanent cordiality and friendship. 



THE EXD OF THE WAK 

WooDROw Wilson 

[address delivered before congress, 
november 11, 1918] 

Gentlemen of the Congress: In these anxious times 
of rapid and stupendous change it will in some degree 
lighten my sense of responsibility to perform in person 
the duty of communicating to you some of the larger 
circumstances of the situation with which it is necessary 
to deal. 

The German authorities, who have, at the invitation of 
tiie supreme war council, been in communication with 
Marshal Foch, have accepted and signed the terms of 
armistice^ which he was authorized and instructed to 
communicate to them.- 

The v\'ar thus comes to an end; for, having accepted 
these terms of armistice, it will be impossible for the 
German command to renew it. 

It is not now possible to assess the consequences of 
this great consummation. We know only that this tragi- 
cal war, whose consuming flames swept from one nation 
to anotlier until all the world was on fire, is at an end 
and that it was the privilege of our own people to enter 
it at its most critical juncture in such fashion and in 
such force as to contribute, in a way of which we are all 
deeply proud, to the great result. 

We know, too, that the object of the war is attained; 

257 



^58 Democracy Today 

the object upon which all free men had set their hearts; 
and attained with a sweeping completeness which even 
now we do not realize. 

Armed imperialism, such as the men conceived who 
were but yesterday the masters of Germany, is at an 
end, its illicit ambitions engulfed in black disaster. Who 
will now seek to revive it? The arbitrary power of the 
military caste of Germany, which once could secretly 
and of its own single choice disturb the peace of the 
world, is discredited and destroyed. 

And more than that — much more than that — has been 
accomplished. The great nations which associated them- 
selves to destroy it had now definitely united in the com- 
mon purpose to set up such a peace as will satisfy the 
longing of the whole world for disinterested justice, 
embodied in settlements which are based upon something 
much better and much more lasting than the selfish com- 
petitive interests of powerful States. 

There is no longer conjecture as to the objects the 
victors have in mind. They have a mind in the matter, 
not onl}^, but a heart also. Their avowed and concerted 
purpose is to satisfy and protect the- weak as well as to 
accord their just rights to the strong. 

The humane temper and intention of the victorious 
Governments has already been manifested in a very prac- 
tical way. Their representatives in the Supreme War 
Council at Versailles have by unanimous resolution as- 
sured the people of the Central Empires that everything 
that is possible in the circumstances will be done to sup- 
ply them with food^ and relieve the distressing want that 
is in so many places threatening their very lives; and 



The End of the War 259 

steps are to be taken immediately to organize these efforts 
at relief in the same systematic manner that they were 
organized in the case of Belgium. 

By the use of the idle tonnage of the Central Empires 
it ought presently to be possible to lift the fear of utter 
misery from their oppressed populations and set their 
minds and energies free for the great and hazardous 
tasks of political reconstruction which now face them on 
every hand. Hunger does not breed reform ; it breeds 
madness and all the ugly distempers that make an or- 
dered life impossible. 

For, with the fall of the ancient Governments* which 
rested like an incubus on the people of the Central 
Empires, has come political change not merely, but revo- 
lution; and revolution which seems as yet to assume no 
final and ordered form, but to run from one fluid change 
to another, until thoughtful men are forced to ask them- 
selves with what governments, and of what sort, are we 
about to deal in the making of the covenants of peace. 

With what authority will they meet us and with what 
assurance that their authority will abide and sustain 
securely the international arrangements into which we 
are about to enter ? There is here matter for no small 
anxiety and misgiving. When peace is made, upon 
whose promises and engagements besides our own is it to 
rest ? 

Let us be perfectly frank with ourselves and admit 
that these questions cannot be satisfactorily answered 
now or at once. But the moral is not that there is little 
hope of an early answer that will suffice. It is only that 
we must be patient and helpful and mindful above all 



260 Democracy Today 

of the great hope and confidence that lie at the heart of 
what is taking place. 

Excesses accomplish nothing. Unhappy Enssia has 
furnished abundant recent proof of that. Disorder im- I 
mediately defeats itself. If excesses should occur, if 
disorder should for a time raise its head, a sober second 
thought will follow and a day of constructive action, if 
we help and do not hinder. 

The present and all that it holds belongs to the na- 
tions and the peoples who preserve their self-control and 
the orderly processes of their Governments; the future 
to those who prove themselves the true friends of man- 
kind. 

To conquer with arms is to make only a temporary 
conquest; to conquer the world by earning its esteem is 
to make permanent conquest. I am confident that the 
nations that have learned the discipline of freedom and 
that have settled with self-possession to its ordered prac- 
tice are now about to make conquest of the world by the 
sheer power of example and of friendly helpfulness. 

The peoples who have but just come out from under 
the yoke of arbitrary government and who are now com- 
ing at last into their freedom will never find the treas- 
ures of liberty they are in search of if they look for them 
by the light of the torch. They will find that every path- 
way that is stained with the blood of their own brothers 
leads to the wilderness, not to the seat of their hope. 

They are now face to face with their initial tests. 
"We must hold the light steady until they find them- 
selves. And in the meantime, if it be possible, we must 
establish a peace that will justly define their place among 



The End of the War 261 

the nations, remove all fear of their neighbors and of 
their former masters, and enable them to live in security 
and contentment when they have set their own affairs 
in order. 

I for one do not doubt their purpose or their capacity. 
There are some happy signs that they know and will 
choose the way of self-control and peaceful accommoda- 
tion. If they do, we shall put our aid at their disposal in 
every way that we can. If they do not, wc must await 
with patience and sympathy the awakening and recovery 
that will assuredly come at last. 



APPENDIX 



THE MEANING OF AMERICA'S ENTRANCE 
INTO THE WAR 

David Lloyd George 

[address delivered at the AMERICAN CLUB IN LONDON^ 
APRIL 12, 1917.] 

I am in the happy position of being, I think, the first 
British Minister of the Crown who, speaking on behalf of 
the people of this country, can salute the American Nation 

1 as comrades in arms. I am glad; I am proud. I am glad 
not merely because of the stupendous resources which this 
great nation will bring to the succor of the alliance, but I 
rejoice as a democrat that the advent of the United States 
into this war gives the final stamp and seal to the character 
of the conflict as a struggle against military autocracy 
throughout the world. 

That was the note that ran through the great deliverance 
of President Wilson.^ It was echoed, Sir, in your resounding 
words today. The United States of America have the noble 
tradition, never broken, of having never engaged in war 
except for liberty. And this is the greatest struggle for 
liberty that they have ever embarked upon. I am not at all 

I surprised, when one recalls the wars of the past, that America 
took its time to make up its mind about the character of this 
struggle. In Europe most of the great w^ars of the past 
were waged for dynastic aggrandizement and conquest. No 
wonder when this great war started that there were some 
elements of suspicion still lurking in the minds of the people 

1 



2 Democracy Today 

of tJie United States of America. There were those who 
thought perhaps that Kings were at their old tricks — and 
although they saw the gallant Eepublic of France fighting, 
they some of them perhaps regarded it as the poor victim of 
a conspiracy of monarehial swashbucklers. The fact that the 
United States of America has made up its mind finally makes 
it abundantly clear to the world that this is no struggle of 
that character, but a great fight for human liberty. 

They naturally did not know at first what we had endured 
in Europe for years from this military caste in Prussia. It 
never has reached the United States of America. Prussia 
was not a democracy. The Kaiser promises that it will be a 
democracy after the war. I think he is right. But Prussia 
not merely was not a democracy. Prussia was not a State; 
Prussia was an army. It had great industries that had been 
highly developed; a great educational system; it had its 
universities, it had developed its science. 

All these were subordinate to the one great predominant 
purpose, the purpose of all — a conquering army which was to 
intimidate the world. The army was the spear-point of 
Prussia; the rest was merely the haft. That was what we 
had to deal with in these old countries. It got on the nerves 
of Europe. They knew what it all meant. It was an army 
that in recent times had waged three wars/ all of conquest, 
and the unceasing tramp of its legions through the streets of 
Prussia, om. the parade grounds of Prussia, had got into the 
Prussian head. The Kaiser, when he witnessed on a grand 
scale his reviews, got drunk with the sound of it.^ He deliv- 
ered the law to the world as if Potsdam was another Sinai, 
and he was uttering the law from the thunder clouds. 

But make no mistake. Europe was uneasy. Europe was 
half intimidated. Europe was anxious. Europe was appre- 
hensive. We knew the whole time what it meant. What we 
did not know was the moment it would come. 

This is the menace, this is the apprehension from which 
Europe has suffered for over fifty years.* It paralyzed the 
beneficent activity of all States, which ought to be devoted 



Meaning of America's Entrance Into the War 3. 

to concentrating on the well-being of their peoples. They 
had to think about this menace, which was there constantly 
as a cloud ready to burst over the land. No one can tell 
except Frenchmen what they endured from this tyranny, 
patiently, gallantly, with dignity, till the hour of deliverance 
came.^ The best energies of domestic science had been 
devoted to defending itself against the impending blow. 
France was like a nation which put up its right arm to ward 
off a blow, and could not give the whole of her strength to 
the great things which she was capable of. That great, 
bold, imaginative, fertilfc mind, which would otherwise have 
been clearing new paths for progress, was paralyzed. 

That is the state of things we had to encounter. The most 
characteristic of Prussian institutions is the Hindenberg line. 
What is the Hindeuburg line? The Hindenburg line is a line 
drawn in the territories of other people, with a warning that 
the inhabitants of those territories shall not cross it at the 
peril of their lives. That line has been drawn in Europe for 
fifty years. 

You recollect what happened some years ago in France, 
when the French Foreign Minister^ was practically driven 
out of office by Prussian interference. Why? What had he 
done? He had done nothing which a Minister of an inde- 
pendent State had not the most absolute right to do. He 
had crossed the imaginary line drawn in French territory 
by Prussian despotism, and he had to leave. Europe, after 
enduring this for generations, made up its mind at last that 
the Hindenburg line must be drawn along th,e legitimate 
frontiers of Germany herself. There could be no other atti- 
tude than that for the emancipation of Europe and the world. 

It was hard at first for the people of America quite to 
appreciate that Germany had not interfered to the same 
extent with their freedom, if at all. But at last they endured 
the same experience as Europe had been subjected to. Amer- 
icans were told that they were not to be allowed to cross 
and recross the Atlantic except at their peril. American 
ships were sunk without warning. American citizens were 



4 Democracy Today 

drowned, hardly with an apology — in fact, as a matter of 
German right. At first America could hardly believe it. 
They could not think it possible that any sane people should 
behave in that manner. And they tolerated it once, and 
they tolerated it twice, until it became clear that the Ger- ' 
mans really meant it. Then America acted, and acted ' 
promptly. 

The Hindenburg line was drawn -along the shores of 
America, and the Americans were told they must not cross 
it. America said, "What is this?" Germany said, "This- 
is our line, beyond which you mfust not go," and America 
said, "The place for that line is not the Atlantic, but on 
the Ehine — and we mean to help you roll it up." 

There are two great facts which clinch the argument that 
this is a great struggle for freedom. The first is the fact 
that America has come in. She would not have come in 
otherwise. The second is the Eussian revolution. When 
France in the eighteenth century sent her soldiers to America 
to fight for the freedom* and independence of that land, 
France also was an autocracy in those days. But Frenchmen 
in America, once they were there — their aim was freedom, 
their atmosphere was freedom, their inspiration was free- 
dom. They acquired a taste for freedom, and they took it 
home, and France became free. That is the story of Russia. 
Russia engaged in this great war for the freedom of Serbia, 
of Montenegro, of Bulgaria, and has fought for the freedom 
of Europe. They wanted to make their own country free, 
and they have done it. The Russian revolution is not merely 
the outcome of the struggle for freedom. It is a proof of 
the character of the struggle for liberty, and if the Russian 
people realize, as there is every evidence they are doing, 
that national discipline is not incompatible with national 
freedom — nay, that national discipline is essential to the 
security of national freedom — they will, indeed, become a 
free people. 

I have been asking myself the question, Why did Germany, 
deliberately, in the third year of the war, provoke America 



Meaning of America's Entrance Into 'che War 5 

to this declaration and to this action — deliberately, reso- 
lutely? It has been suggested that the reason was that there 
were certain elements in American life, and they were under 
the impression that they would make it impossible for the 
United States to declare war. That I can hardly believe. But 
the answer has been afforded by Marshal von Hindenburg 
himself, in the very remarkable interview which appeared 
in the press, I think, only this morning. 

He depended clearly on one of two things. First, that 
the submarine campaign would have destroyed international 
shipping to such an extent that England would have been put 
out of business before America was ready. According to 
his computation, America cannot be ready for twelve months. 
He does not know America. In the alternative, that when 
America is ready, at the end of twelve months, with her 
army, she will have no ships to transport that army to the 
field of battle. In von Hindenburg 's words, ''America car- 
ries no weight, ' ' I suppose he means she has no ships to carry 
weight. On that, undoubtedly, they are reckoning. 

Well, it is not wise always to assume that even when the 
German General Staff, which has miscalculated so often, 
makes a calculation it has no ground for it. It therefore 
behooves the whole of the Allies, Great Britain and America 
in particular, to see that that reckoning of von Hindenburg 
is as false as the one he made about his famous line, which 
we have broken already. 

The road to victory, the guarantee of victory, the abso- 
lute assurance of victory is to be found in one word — ships; 
and a second word — ships; and a third word — ships. And 
with that quickness of apprehension which characterizes 
your nation, Mr. Chairman, I see that they fully realize that, 
and today I observe that they have already made arrange- 
ments to build one thousand 3000-tonners for the Atlantic. 
I think that the German military advisers must already begin 
to realize that this is another of the tragic miscalculations 
which are going to lead them to disaster and to ruin. But 
you will pardon me for emphasizing that. We are a slow 



6 Democracy Today 

people in these islands — slow and blundering — ^but we get 
there. You get there sooner, and that is why I am glad to 
see you in. 

But may I say that we have been in this business for three 
years? We have, as we generally do, tried every blunder. 
In golfing phraseology, we have got into every bunker. But 
we have got a good niblick. We are right out on the course. 
But may I respectfully suggest that it is worth America's 
while to study our blunders, so as to begin just where we. J 
^re now and not where we were three years ago? That is an 
advantage. In war, time has as tragic a significance as it has 
in sickness. A step which, taken today, may lead to assured 
victory, taken tomorrow may barely avert disaster. All the 
Allies have discovered that. It was a new country for us all. 
It was trackless, mapless. We had to go by instinct. But 
we found the way, and I am so glad that you are sending 
your great naval and military experts here, just to exchange 
experiences with men who have been through all the dreary, 
anxious crises of the last three years. 

America has helped us even to win the battle of Arras. 
Do you know that these guns which destroyed the German 
trenches, shattered the barbed wire — I remember, with some 
friends of mine whom I see here, arranging to order the 
machines to make those guns from America. Not all of them 
— you got your share, but only a share, a glorious share. So 
that America has also had her training. She has been mak- 
ing guns, making ammunition, giving us machinery to pre- 
pare both; she has supplied us with steel, and she has got 
all that organization and she has got that wonderful facility, 
adaptability, and resourcefulness of the great people which 
inhabits that great continent. Ah! It was a bad day for 
military autocracy in Prussia when it challenged the great 
Eepublie of the West. We know what America can do, and 
we also know that now she is in it she will do it. She will 
wage an effective and successful war. 

There is something more important. She will insure a 
beneficent peace. I attach great importance — and I am the 



Meaning of Americans Entrance Into the ^Yar 7 

last man in the world, knowing for three years what our 
difficulties have been, what our anxieties have been, and what 
our fears have been — I am the last man to say that the succor 
which is given to us from America is not something in itself 
to rejoice in, and to rejoice in greatly. But I don 't mind 
saying that I rejoice even more in the knowledge that 
America is going to win the right to be at the conference 
table when the terms of peace are being discussed. That 
conference will settle the destiny of nations — the course 
of human life — for God knows how many ages. It would 
have been tragic for mankind if America had not been there, 
and there with all the influence, all the power, and the right 
which she has now won by flinging herself into this great 
struggle. 

I can see peace coming now — not a peace which will be 
the beginning of war; not a peace which will be an endless 
preparation for strife and bloodshed; but a real peace. The 
world is an old world. It has never had peace. It has been 
rocking and swaying like an ocean, and Europe — poor 
Europe! — has always lived under the menace of the sword. 
When this war began two-thirds of Europe were under 
autocratic rule. It is the other way about now, and democ- 
racy means peace. The democracy of France did not want 
war; the democracy of Italy hesitated long before they 
entered the war; the democracy of this country shrank from 
it — shrank and shuddered — and never would have entered 
the caldron had it not been for the invasion of Belgium. 
The democracies sought peace; strove for peace. If Prussia 
had been a democracy there would have been no war. Strange 
things have happened in this war. There are stranger things 
to come, and they are coming rapidly. 

There are times in history when this world spins so leis- 
urely along its destined course that it seems for centuries 
to be at a standstill; but there are also times when it rushes 
along at a giddy pace, covering the track of centuries in a 
year. Those are the times we are living in now. Six weeks 
ago Russia was an autocracy; she now is one of the most 



8 Democracy Today 

advanced democracies in the world. Today we are waging 
the most devastating war that the world has ever seen; 
tomorrow — perhaps not a distant tomorrow — war may be 
abolished forever from the category of human crimes. This ^ 
may be something like the fierce outburst of Winter which i 
we are now witnessing before the complete triumph of the • 
sun. It is written of those gallant men who won that victory 
on Monday'' — men from Canada, from Australia, and from 
this old country, which has proved that in spite of its age 
it is not decrepit — it is written of those gallant men that they 
attacked with the dawn — fit work for the dawn! — to drive 
out of forty miles of French soil those miscreants who had 
defiled it for three years. ''They attacked with the dawn." 
Significant phrase! m 

The breaking up of the dark rule of the Turk, which for 
centuries has clouded the sunniest land in the world, the 
freeing of Eussia from an oppression which has covered it 
like a shroud for so long, the great declaration of President 
Wilson coming with the might of the great nation which he 
represents into the struggle for liberty are heralds of the 
dawn. ''They attacked with the dawn," and these men are 
marching forward in the full radiance of that dawn, and 
soon Frenchmen and Americans, British, Italians, Russians, 
yea, and Serbians, Belgians, Montenegrins, will march into 
the full light of a perfect day. ' 



i 



THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 

PEEAMBLE 

We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more 
perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, 
provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, 
and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our poster- 
ity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United 
States of America. 

ARTICLE I 

THE LEGISLATIVE DEPARTMENT 

The Congress : Its Divisions and Powers 

Section 1. All legislative powers herein granted shall be 
vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist 
of a Senate and House of Kepresentatives. 

The House: Its Composition and Powers 

See. 2. The House of Representatives shall be composed of 
members chosen every second year by the people of the several 
states, and the electors in each state shall have the qualifica- 
tions requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the 
state legislature. 

No person shall be a representative who shall not have attained 
to the age of twenty-five years, and been seven years a citizen 
of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an 
inhabitant of that state in which he shall be chosen. 

(Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among 
the several states which may be included within this Union, 
according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined 
by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those 
bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not 
taxed, three-fifths of all other persons.*) The actual enumera- 



* Partly superseded by the Fourteenth Amendment. 

9 



10 Democracy Today 

tion shall be made within three years after the first meeting of ' 
the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent 
term of ten years, in such manner as they shall by law direct. 
The number of representatives shall not exceed one for every 
thirty thousand, but each state shall have at least one repre- 
sentative; and until such enumeration shall be made the state 
of New Hampshire shall be entitled to choose three; Massachu- 
setts, eight; Ehode Island and Providence Plantations, one; 
Connecticut, five; New York, six; New Jersey, four; Pennsyl- 
vania, eight; Delaware, one; Maryland, six; Virginia, ten; 
North Carolina, five; South Carolina, five; and Georgia, three. 

When vacancies happen in the representation from any state, 
the executive authority thereof shall issue writs of election to 
fill such vacancies. 

The House of Eepresentatives shall choose their Speaker and 
other ofl&cers, and shall have the sole power of impeachment. 

The Senate: Its Composition and Powers 

Sec. 3. The Senate of the United States shall be composed 
of two senators from each state, chosen by the legislature 
thereof, for six years; and each senator shall have one vote. 

Immediately after they shall be assembled in consequence of 
the first election, they shall be divided as equally as may be 
into three classes. The seats of the senators of the first class 
shall be vacated at the expiration of the second year; of the 
second class, at the expiration of the fourth year; of the third 
class, at the expiration of the sixth year, so that one-third may 
be chosen every second year; and if vacancies happen by resig- 
nation, or otherwise, during the recess of the legislature of any 
state, the executive thereof may make temporary appointments 
until the next meeting of the legislature, which shall fill such 
vacancies. 

No person shall be a senator who shall not have attained to 
the agr cf thirty years, and been nine years a citizen of the 
United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant 
of that state for which he shall be chosen. 

The Vice-president of the United States shall be president of 
the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided. 



The Constitution of the United States 11 

The Senate shall choose their other officers, and also a presi- 
dent pro tempore, in the absence of the Vice-president, or when 
he shall exercise the office of President of the United States. 

The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments; 
when sitting for that purpose, they shall be on oath or affirma- 
tion. When the President of the United States is tried, the 
Chief Justice shall preside; and no person shall be convicted 
without the concurrence of two-thirds of the members present. 

Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further 
than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and 
enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United 
States; but the party convicted shall, neverthless, be liable and 
subject to indictment, trial, judgment, and punishment accord- 
ing to law. 

Congressional Elections and Date of Assembly 

Sec. 4. The times, places, and manner of holding elections 
for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each 
state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at ajiy 
time, by law, make or alter such regulations, except as to the 
places of choosing senators. 

The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and 
such meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless 
they shall by law appoint a different day. 

Rules of Procedure of Senate and House 

Sec. 5. Each house shall be the judge of the elections, returns, 
and qualifications of its own members, and a majority of each 
shall constitute a quorum to do business; but a smaller number 
may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel 
the attendance of absent members, in such manner and under 
such penalties as each house may provide. 

Each house may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish 
its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence 
of two-thirds, expel a member. 

Each house shall keep a journal of its proceedings, and from 
time to time publish the same, excepting such parts as may in 
their judgment require secrecy; and the yeas and nays of the 
members of either house on any question shall, at the desire of 
one-fifth of those present, be entered on the journal. 



12 Democracy Today 

Neither house, during the session of Congress, shall, without 
the consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor 
to any other place than that in which the two houses shall be 
sitting. 

Compensation and Privileges of Members 

Sec. 6. The senators and representatives shall receive a com- 
pensation for their services, to be ascertained by law, and paid 
out of the treasury of the United States. They shall in all 
cases, except treason, felony, and breach of the peace, be privi- 
leged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their 
respective houses, and in going to and returning from the same; 
and for any speech or debate in either house, they shall not be 
questioned in any other place. 

No senator or representative shall," during the time for which 
he was elected, be appointed to any civil ofidce under the author- 
ity of the United States which shall have been created, or the 
emoluments whereof shall have been increased, during such 
time; and no person holding any office under the United States 
shall be a member of either house during his continuance in 
office. 

MetJiods of Legislation 

Sec. 7. All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the 
House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or con- 
cur with amendments as on other bills. 

Every bill which shall have passed the House of Eepresenta- 
tives and the Senate shall, before it becomes a law, be presented 
to the President of the United States; if he approve, he shall 
sign it, -but if not, he shall return it, with his objections, to 
that house in which it shall have originated, who shall enter 
the objections at large on their journal, and proceed to recon- 
sider it. If after such reconsideration two-thirds of that house 
shall agree to pass the bill, it shall be sent, together with the 
objections, to the other house, by which it shall likewise be 
reconsidered, and if approved by two-thirds of that house, it 
shall become a law. But in all such cases the votes of both 
houses shall be determined by yeas and nays, and the names of 
the persons voting for and against the bill shall be entered on 



The Constitution of the United States 13 

the journal of each house respectively. If any bill shall not 
be returned by the president within ten days (Sundays excepted) 
after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a 
law, in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress 
by their adjournment prevent its return, in which case it shall 
not be a law. 

Every order, resolution, or vote to which the concurrence of 
the Senate and House of Eepresentatives may be necessary 
(except on a question of adjournment) shall be presented to the 
President of the United States ; and before the same shall take 
effect, shall be approved by him, or being disapproved by him, 
shall be repassed by two-thirds of the Senate and House of 
Eepresentatives, according to the rules and limitations pre- 
scribed in the case of a bill. 

Powers Vested in Congress 

Sec. 8. The Congress shall have power: 

To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay 
the debts and provide for the common defenses and general 
welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts, and 
excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; 

To borrow money on the credit of the United States; 

To regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the 
several states, and with the Indian tribes; 

To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform 
laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United 
States ; 

To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign 
coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures; 

To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securi- 
ties and current coin of the United States; 

To establish post offices and post roads; 

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by secur- 
ing, for limited times, to authors and inventors, the exclusive 
right to their respective writings and discoveries; 

To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court; 

To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the 
high seas, and offenses against the law of nations; 



14 Democracy Today 

To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and 
make rules concerning captures on land and water ; 

To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money 
to that use shall be for a longer term than two years ; 

To provide and maintain a navy; 

To make rules for the government and regulation of the land 
and naval forces; 

To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of 
the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions; 

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the 
militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed 
in the service of the United States, reserving to the states, 
respectively, the appointment of the offiLcers and the authority 
of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by 
Congress ; 

To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over 
such district (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by ces- 
sion of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, 
become the seat of the government of the United States, and to 
exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent 
of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for 
the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other 
needful buildings; and — 

To make all laws w-hich shall be necessary and proper for 
carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other 
powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the 
United States, or in any department or officer thereof. 

Limits to Powers of the Federal Government 
Sec. 9. The migration or importation of such persons as any 
of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not 
be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand 
eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on 
such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person. 

The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be sus- 
pended, unless when in case of rebellion or invasion the public 
safety may require it. 

No bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed. 



The Constitution of the United States 15 

No capitation or other direct tax shall be laid, -unless in pro- 
portion to the census or enumeration herein before directed to 
be taken. 

No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any 
state. 

No preference shall be given by any regulation of commerce 
or revenue to the ports of one state over those of another; nor 
shall vessels bound to, or from, one state, be obliged to enter, 
clear, or pay duties in another. 

No money shall be drawn from the treasury but in conse- 
quence of appropriations made by law; and a regular statement 
and account of the receipts and expenditures of all public 
money shall be published from time to time. 

No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States. 
And no person holding any office of profit or trust under them 
shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, 
emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, 
prince, or foreign state. 

Limits to Poicers of the States 

Sec. 10. Xo state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or con- 
federation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; 
emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a 
tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post 
facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant 
any title of nobility. 

No state shall, without the consent of the Congress, lay any 
imposts or duties on imports or exports, except what may be 
absolutely necessary for executing its inspection laws; and the 
net produce of all duties and imposts, laid by any state on 
imports or exports, shall be for the use of the treasury of the 
United States; and all such laws shall be subject to the revision 
and control of the Congress. 

No state shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty 
of tonnage, keep troops, or ships of war in time of peace, enter 
into any agreement or compact with another state, or with a 
foreign power, or engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in 
such imminent danger as will not admit of delay. 



16 Democracy Today 

ARTICLE II 

THE KXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT 

The Executive Officers; the Electoral College 

Section 1. The executive power shall be vested in a Presidtint 
of the United States of America. He shall hold his office during 
the term of four years, and, together with the Vice-President, 
chosen for the same term, be elected, as follows: 

Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the legislatui'e 
thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole 
number of senators and representatives to which the state may 
be entitled in the Congress; but no senator or representative, 
or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United 
States, shall be appointed an elector. 

(The electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by 
ballot for two persons, of whom one at least shall not be an 
inhabitant of the same state with themselves. And they shall 
make a list of all the persons voted for, and of the number of 
votes for each; which list they shall sign and certify, and trans- 
mit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, 
directed to the president of the Senate. The president of the 
Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Repre- 
sentatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be 
counted. The person having the greatest number of votes shall 
be the President, if such number be a majority of the wTiole 
number of electors appointed; and if there be more than one 
who have such majority, and have an equal number of votes, 
then the House of Representatives shall immediately choose by 
ballot one of them for President; and if no person have a 
majority, then from the five highest on the list the said House 
shall, in like manner, choose the President. But in choosing 
the President the votes shall be taken by states, the representa- 
tion from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose 
shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the 
states, and a majority of all the states sihall be necessary to a 
choice. In every case, after the choice of the President, the 
person having the greatest number of votes of the electors shall 



J'he Constitution of the United States 17 

be ?hQ Vice-President. But if there should remain two or more 
who have equal votes, the Senate shall choose from them by 
ballot the Vice-president.*) 

The Congress may determine the time of choosing the electors, 
"^nd the day on which they shall give their votes; which day 
shall be the same throughout the United States. 

No person except a natural-born citizen, or a citizen of the 
United States at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, 
shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any 
person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to 
the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident 
within the United States. 

In case of the removal of the President from oflSxje, or of 
his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and 
duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice- 
president, and the Congress may by law provide for the case 
of removal, death, resignation, or inability, both of the 
President and Vice-President, declaring what officer shall then 
act as President; and such officer shall aet accordingly, until 
the disability be removed, or a President shall be elected. 

The president shall, at stated times, receive for his services 
a compensation which shall neither be increased nor diminished 
during the period for which he shall have been elected, and he 
shall not receive within that period any other emolument from 
the United States, or any of them. 

Before he enter on the execution of his office, he shall taKe 
the following oath or affirmation: ''I do solemnly swear (or 
affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President 
of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, pre- 
serve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United 
States. ' ' 

Powers Granted to the President 

Sec. 2. The President shall be commander-in-chief of the 
army and navy of the United States, and of the militia of the 
several states, when called into the actual service of the United 



♦This paragraph was in force only from 17S8 to 1803. 



18 Democracy Today 

States; he may acquire the opinion, in writing, of the principal 
officer in each of the executive departments, upon any subject 
relating to the duties of their respective offices; and he shall 
have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against 
the United States, except in cases of impeachment. 

He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of 
the Senate, to make treaties, provided two-thirds of the senators 
present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the ad- 
vice and consent of the Senate shall appoint, ambassadors, 
•other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme 
Court, and all other officers of the United States whose appoint- 
ments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall 
be established by law; but the Congress may by law vest the 
appointment of such inferior offices as they think proper in the 
President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of de- 
partments. 

The President shall have power to fill up vacancies that may 
happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions 
which will expire at the end of their next session. 

The President's Duties 

Sec. 3. He shall from time to time give to the Congress in- 
formation of the state of the Union, and recommend to their 
consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and ex- 
pedient; he may, on extraordinary occasions, convene both 
houses, or either of them, and in case of disagreement between 
them, with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn 
them to such time as he shall think proper; he shall receive 
ambassadors and other public ministers; he shall take care that 
the laws be faithfully executed, and shall commission all the 
officers of the United States. 

Impeachment of Executive and Civil Officers 
Sec. 4. The President, Vice-president, and all civil officers 
of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeach- 
ment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other higb 
crimes and misdemeanors. 



The Constitution of the United States 19 

AKTICLE III 

THE JUDICIAL DEPAKTMENT 

The Federal Courts — Supreme and Inferior 

Section 1. The judicial power of tlie United States shall be 
vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as 
the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The 
judges, both of the Supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their 
oflfices during good behavior, and shall, at stated times, receive 
for their services a compensation which shall not be diminishec 
during their continuance in office. 

Powers and Jurisdiction of the Federal Courts 
Sec. 2. The judicial power shall extend to all cases, itt law 
and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of thr 
United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, undei 
their authority; to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public 
ministers, and consuls; to all cases of admiralty and maritime 
jurisdiction; to controversies to which the United States shall 
be a party; to controversies between two or more states; (be- 
tween a state and citizens of another state*) ; between citizens 
of different states; between citizens of the same state claiming 
lands under grants of different states, and between a state, or 
the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens, or subjects. 

In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers, and 
consuls, and those in which a state shall be a party, the Su- 
preme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other 
cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate 
jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions and 
under such regulations as the Congress shall make. 

The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall 
be by jury; and such trial shall be held in the state where the 
said crimes shall have been committed; but when not com- 
mitted within any state, the trial shall be at such place or plac3s 
as the Congress may by law have directed. 



•Cancelled by the Eleventh Amendment. 



20 Democracy Today 

Treason: Its Nature and Punishment 

Sec. 3. Treason against the United States shall consist only 
in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, 
giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of 
treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same 
overt act, or on confession in open court. 

The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of 
treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of 
blood, or forfeiture, except during the life of the person at- 
tained. 

ARTICLE IV 

RELATION OF THE STATE AND FEDERAL GOVERNMENTS 

Recognition of State Authority 

Section 1. Full faith and credit shall be given in each state 
to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of e\^ery 
other state. And the Congress may, by general laws, prescribe 
the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings shall 
be proved, and the effect thereof. 

Laws Regarding Citizens of the States 

Sec. 2. The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all 
privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states. 

A person charged in any state with treason, felony, or other 
crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another state, 
shall, on demand of the executive authority of the state from 
which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the state hav- 
ing jurisdiction of the crime. 

No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws 
thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law 
or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, 
but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such 
ser\dce or labor may be due. 
Admission of States and Regulation of United States Territories 

Sec. 3. New states may be admitted by the Congress into this 
Union; but no new state shall be formed or erected within the 
jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the 
junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the 



The Constitution of the United States 21 

consent of the legislature of the states concerned as well as of 
the Congress, 

The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all 
needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other 
property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this 
Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any claims 
of the United States, or of any particular state. 

Protection Guaranteed by the Federal Government 

Sec. 4. The United States shall guarantee to every state in 
this Union a republican form of government, and shall protect 
each of them against invasion ; and on ap»plication of the legis- 
lature, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be con- 
vened), against domestic violence. 

ARTICLE V 

POWER AND METHOD OF AMENDING THE CONSTITUTION 

The Congress whenever two-thirds of both houses shall deem 
it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, 
on the application of the legislature of two-thirds of the several 
states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, 
in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part 
of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislature of three- 
fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three-fourths 
thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be pro- 
posed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may 
be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight 
shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the 
ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without 
its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the 
Senate. 

ARTICLE VI 

PUBLIC DEBTS; THE SUPREME LAW; OATH OF OFFICE; RELIGIOUS 

TEST PROHIBITED 

All debts contracted and engagements entered into before 
the adoption of this Constitution shall be as valid against the 
United States under this Constitution as under the confed- 
eration. 



22 Democracy Today 

This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which 
shall be made in pursuance thereof ] and all treaties made, or 
which shaU be made, under the authority of the United States, 
shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every 
state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or 
laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding. 

The senators and representatives before mentioned, and the 
members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and 
judiciai ofhcers, both of the United States and of the several 
states, shall be bouod by oath or affirmation to support this 
constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a 
qualification to any office or public trust under the United 
States. 

ARTICLE YII 

RATIFICATION AND ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CONSTITUTION 

The ratification of the conventions of nine states shall be 
sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution between the 
states so ratifying the same. 

Done in convention by the unanimous consent of the states 
present, the seventeenth day of September, in the year of our 
Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven, and of 
the independence of the United States ot America the twelfth. 

In witness whereof, we have hereunto subscribed our names, 
GEO. WASHINGTON, Deputy from Virginia. 

New Hampshire.: New Jersey: 

John Langdon William Livingston 

Nicholas Gilman David Brearley 



Massachusetts 



WiUiam Paterson 



Jonathan Dayton 
Nathaniel Gorham Pennsylvania: 

Rufus King Benjamin Franklin 

Thomas Mifflin 



Robert Morris 



Connecticut : 

William Samuel Johnson 

-r, cii- George Clymer 

Roger Sherman , ^ •; . 

Thomas Fitzsimmons 

New York : James Wilson 

Alexander Hamilton Gouverneur Morris 



The ConstiUdion of the United States 23 



Delaware: 

George Keed 

Gimning Bedford, Jr. 

John Dickinson 

Richard Bassett 

Jacob Broom 
Maryland : 

James McHenry 

Daniel of St. Thomas 
Jenifer 

Daniel Carroll 
Virginia : 

John Blair 

Jamea Madison, Jr. 



North Carolina: 
William Blount 
Eichard Dobbs Spaight 
Hugh Williamson 

South Carolina: 
John Eutledge 
Charles Pinckney 
Charles Cotesworth 

Pinckney 
Pierce Butler « 

Georgia : 

William Few 
Abraham Baldwin 



Attest : WILLIAM JACKSON, Secretary. 

AMENDMENTS 

Articles in addition to, and amendments of, the Constitution 
of the United States of America, proposed by Congress, and 
ratified by the legislatures of the several states pursuant to the 
fifth article of the original Constitution. 

ARTICLE I 
freedom of religion and speech; right of assembly 
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of 
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging 
the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the peo- 
ple peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a 
redress of grievances. 

ARTICLE II 
right to bear arms 
A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a 
free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall 
not be infringed. 

ARTICLE III 

QUARTERING OF TROOPS 

No soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house 
without the consent of the owner; nor in time of war but in a 
manner to be prescribed by law. 



24 Democracy Today 

ARTICLE IV 

RIGHT OF SEARCH PROHIBITED 

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, 
papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, 
shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon prob- 
able cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly 
describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things 
to be seized. 

AETICLE V 

RIGHT OF TRIAL BY JURY 

No person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise 
inf&.mous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a 
grand jury, except in eases arising in the land or naval forces, 
or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war and 
public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same 
offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life and limb; nor shall 
be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against him- 
self, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due 
process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public 
use, without just compensation. 

ARTICLE VI 

RIGHTS OP ACCUSED IN CRIMINAL CASES 

In all criminal proseeutions the accused shall enjoy the right 
to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state 
and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which 
district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to 
be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be 
confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory 
process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the 
assistance of counsel for his defense, 

ARTICLE VII 

SUITS AT COMMON LAW 

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall 
exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be pre- 
served, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-exam- 
ined in any court of the United States than according to the 
rules of common law. 



The Constitution of the United States 25 

AKTICLE VIII 

BAIL AND FINES 

.Excessi'^e bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines im- 
posod, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. 

ARTICLE IX 

MODIFICATION OF ENUMERATED RIGHTS 

The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not 
be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. 

ARTICLE X 

POWERS RESERVED TO STATES AND THE PEOPLE 

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Consti- 
tution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the 
states respectively, or to the people. 

ARTICLE XI 

LIMITATION TO POWER OF THE FEDERAL COURTS 

The judicial power of the United States shall not be con- 
strued to extend to any suit in law or equity, •commenced or 
prosecuted against one of the United States by citizens of 
another state, or by citizens or subjects of any foreign state. 

ARTICLE XII 

NEW ELECTORAL LAW 

The electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by 
ballot for President and Vice-president, one of whom, at least, 
shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; 
they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as Presi- 
dent, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-presi- 
dent ; and they shall m^ake distinct lists of all persons voted for 
as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-president, and 
of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and 
certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of 
the United States, directed to the President of the Senate ; the 
President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate 
and House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and 
the votes shall then be counted; the person having the greatest 
number of votes for President shall be the President, if such 
number be a majority of the whole number of electors ap- 
pointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the 



26 Democracy Today 

persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the 
list of those voted for as President, the House of Representa- 
tives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But 
in choosing the President, the vote shall be taken by states, the 
representation from each state having one vote. A quorum for 
i;his purpose shall consist of a member or members from two- 
thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be 
necessary to a choice. And if the House of Eepresentatives 
shall not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall 
devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next follow- 
ing, then the Vice-president shall act as President, as in the case 
of the death or other constitutional disability of the President. 
The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-presi- 
dent shall be the Vice-president, if such number be a majority 
of the whole number of electors appointed; and if no person 
have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the 
list the Senate shall choose the Vice-president. A quorum for 
the pui'pose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of 
senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary 
to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the 
office of President -shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of 
the United States. 

ARTICLE XIII 

ABOLITION OF SLAVERY 

Slavery and Involuntary Servitude Prohibited 
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except 

as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been 

duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place 

subject to their jurisdiction. 

Sec. 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by 

appropriate legislation. 

ARTICLE XIV 

NEW LAWS MADE NECESSARY BY THE CIVIL WAR 

Qualifications for Citizenship 
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United 
States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of 
the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No 



The Constitution of the United States 07 

state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the 
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor 
shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, 
without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its 
jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. 

Apportionment of Eepresentatives 

Sec. 2. Eepresentatives shall be apportioned among the sev- 
eral states according to their respective numbers, counting the 
whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not 
taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice 
of electors for President and Vice-President of the United 
States, representatives in Congress, the executive or judicial 
officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is 
denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being 
twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or 
in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or 
other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced 
in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall 
bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of 
age in such state. 

Disability for Breaking Oath of Office 

Sec. 3. No person shall be a senator, or representative an 
Congress, or elector of President or Vice-President, or hold any 
office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any 
state, who, having previously taken an oath as a member of 
Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member 
of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer 
of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, 
shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, 
or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress 
may, by a vote of two-thirds of each house, remove such dis- 
ability. 

The Public Debt 

Sec. 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, 
authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pen- 
sions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or 
rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United 



28 Democracy Today 

States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation 
incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United 
States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; 
but all such debts, obligations, and claims shall be held illegal 
and void. 

Sec. 5. Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appro- 
priate legislation, the provisions of this article. 

ARTICLE XV 

RIGHT OF SUFFRAGE 

Eight Guaranteed to All Citizens 
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote 
shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any 
istate, on account of race, calor, or previous condition of servi- 
tude. 

Sec. 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by 
appropriate legislation. 

ARTICLE XVI 

INCOME TAX 

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes od 
incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment 
among the several states, and without regard to any census or 
enumeration. 

ARTICLE XVII 

ELECTION OF SENATORS 

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two 
Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six 
years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors io 
each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors 
of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures. 

"When vacancies happen in the representation of any State 
in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue 
"writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the 
legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof 
to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacan- 
cies by election as the legislature may direct. 

This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the 
election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid 
as part of the Constitution. 



BIOGRAPHICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES 

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) 

The circumstances of the writing and delivery of Lincoln's 
address at Gettysburg are so well known as scarcely to need 
recounting. The battle had been fought July 1-2-3 of 1863 
and the check there sustained by the Confederacy marked the 
turning point in the Civil War. Lincoln's address, delivered 
Nov. 19, 1863, at the Dedication of the Gettysburg National 
Cemetery, has remained one of the most important and strik- 
ing documents in the history of American Democracy. His 
definition of our system of rule ''as government of the peo- 
ple, by the people, for the people" has become a touchstone 
of one's Americanism. 

The reading of this famous passage, almost universally 
adopted in our time, which places the emphasis on the prepo- 
sitions of, hy, and for is incorrect in the sense that it is not 
that used by Lincoln himself. President John Grier Hibben 
of Princeton University informs the editor that one of the 
audience on that memorable day has assured him that the 
emphasis was placed by Lincoln unmistakably on the word 
people, which he made stronger with each repetition, "govern- 
ment of the people, by the people, for the PEOPLE." It is 
natural that Lincoln should have done this, for to him one of 
the greatest advantages in our system of government was the 
importance and the opportunity it gave to the young citizen 
poor in purse and social station. This was one of the reasons 
why he believed slavery hostile to the spirit of democracy. He 
"was proud to count himself one of the people. The point was 
brought out sharply in his speech delivered at New Haven^ 
March 6, 1860, before his election to the Presidency. 

''One of the reasons why I am opposed to slavery is just 
this: what is the true condition of the laborer? I take it that 
it is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property 
as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don't believe in 
a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do mora 



30 Democracy Today 

^age 

harm than good. So while we do not propose any war on cap- 
ital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to 
get rich with everybody else. When one starts poor, as most 
of us do in the race of life, free society is such that he knows 
he can better his condition; he knows that there is no fixed 
condition of labor for his whole life. I am not ashamed to 
confess that twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer, maul- 
ing rails, at work on a flatboat — just what might happen to 
any poor man's son. I want every man to have a chance — 
land I believe a black man is entitled to it — in which he can 
better his condition — where he may look forward and hope to 
be a hired laborer this year and the next, work for himself 
afterward, and finally to hire men to work for him. That is 
the true system." 

Further light on the character of Lincoln will be found in 
President Wilson's address on Abraham Lincoln, pages 96-101. 

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address 

(Bold face figures refer to pages; plain figures to note num- 
bers in text.) 

"• 1. Lincoln with characteristic modesty little thought that his 
address would go down to posterity. Before its delivery he 
told a friend : " It is a flat failure. The people won 't like it. ' ' 

'8. 2. This definition of our government may possibly have been 
suggested to Lincoln by a phrase of the abolitionist preacher, 
Theodore Parker, in a speech delivered in 1858. Parker's 
statement ran ''Democracy is direct self-government, over all 
tho people, by all the people, for all the people." Lincoln's 
simpler statement is in any case more effective. 

James Eussell Lowell 
James Eussell Lowell, 1819-1891, added to his fame as poet 
and essayist, the distinction of having served his country as 
ambassador to Spain 1876-1880, and to Great Britain, 1880- 
1885'. He performed a particularly useful service in interpret- 
ing England and the United States to each other. The address 
on Democracy, which shows his optimistic faith and native 
Americanism, was delivered during this period of his stay in 
England. It should be remembered that as late as 1884, Ameri- 
can democracy was still in European eyes on the defensive. 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 31 

Democracy 

!0- 1, Plato is more idealistic than Aristotle; henc^ "the tower 
of Plato. ' ' His works, with chose of Aristotle, constitute the 
most important body of ancient philosophy. 

•2. 2. Lowell, born in 1819 at Cambridge, Mass., on the edge of 
the open country, had seen the transformation of his section 
from a rural to an industrial population. The French trav- 
elers had brought back glowing accounts of the simple life of 
the American settlers and even of the American Indians. 
Though Lowell did not like the change he would not willingly 
testify against it; hence the reference to Balaam. See Num- 
bers, xxii, xxiii. 

3. The property qualification for suffrage, general in the 
early years of our government, had been abolished in Massa- 
chusetts at the Constitutional Convention in 1820. 

4. In the period of the Civil War Massachusetts paid out in 
bounties and bounty loans $26,000,000 and the war debt of the 
state at the close of the war was $15,000,000. 

M. 5. In the speech on Moving his Resolution for Conciliation 
with the "Colonies, March 22, 1775, Burke says, "I do not 
know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole 
people." Select Works, Clarendon Press, 1892, Vol. I, p. 192. 
It is impossible to identify exactly the ''French gentleman" 
referred to. Lowell may have been thinking of the well- 
known critic and historian, Taine, who satirized certain Ameri- 
can tendencies in his Life and Opinions of F. T. Graindorge. 

6. Zola (1840-1902) was at this time (1884) the most dis- 
cussed novelist in France. His novels include ''naturalistic" 
pictures of the worst and most depraved elements in French 
life. 

7. Democracy was not nearly so popular in Europe in 1884 
as it is at present. The excesses of the Paris Commune in 
1871 had dealt a severe blow to the idea that the people can 
govern themselves. The great Civil War through which we 
ourselves had passed had likewise discouraged enthusiasm for 
democracy. 



32 Democracy Today 

Page ** 

25. 8. A species of grape louse which at this time was ruining 
the vineyards of France. 

8a. The Boers had started a revolt in 1880 and in 1881 
routed the small British force at Majuba Hill, 

9. A distinguished Venetian ambassador (1507-1565). 

26. 10. Not one but many of the fathers of the church con- 
tested the rights of property. The medieval church held that 
the taking of interest was sinful and it was this condemnation 
that threw money-lending as a business into the hands of the 
Jews. It made no distinction between usury and interest. 

11. Proudhon (1809-1865), a French radical and socialist 
who summarily defined property as a theft in his famous volume 
What Is Property? published in 1840. 

12. Bourdaloue (1632-1704), a famous French pulpit orator, 
not at all revolutionary in his general conceptions. 

13. Montesquieu (1689-1755), author of The Spirit of the 
Laws and historically the most important of the modern polit- 
ical writers. His work influenced the framers of our Consti- 
tution and he is frequently referred to by Jefferson. 

National workshops (ateliers nationaux) were established 
in France just before the French Revolution, but Lowell is 
doubtless thinking about the national workshops which were 
founded after the Eevolution of 1848 in France and which 
were a failure. Lowell strains his point when he attributes 
them to Montesquieu, He is trying to prove in this passage 
that most of the ' ' heresies ' ' attributed to American Democracy 
were in existence before we had declared our independence. 

14. Like all the above statements, true in a measure. In 
the Church of the Middle Ages a career was open to young 
men of ability, whatever their station, far more readily than 
at the court or in the army from which persons not of noble 
birth were in most cases excluded. 

15. Charles V. (1500-1555), Emperor of the Holy Eoman 
Empire in the time of Luther. More clearly than most of his 
contemporaries he saw the leaven of ''democracy" working in 
the reforms demanded of the church. The Reformation was a 
protest against outside authority in religious matters; the 



Biographical a/nd Explanatory Notes 33 



ige 



American and French Eevolutions were protests against sub- 
mission to authority in political matters. The refusal to submit 
to the rule of any power outside ourselves is the first step in 
democracy. The idea of ''government by the consent of the 
■governed" is fundamental to it and is frequently emphasized 
by President Wilson, as in the close of his A World League 
for Peace. Contrast this with Emperor William's attitude in 
Note 15 to Wilson's War Message. 

16. That is, extreme poverty (Lazarus) and what it entails, 
slums, unsanitary conditions, criminality, are plague-spots in a 
state, which the existence of a very wealthy class (Dives) does 
not cure or compensate for. 
!7. 17. ''Forge of the races or mother of peoples. '^ The Brit- 
ish have of course been recognized as the colonizing people 
par excellence. 

18. Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2. 

19. The "rights of man," a phrase frequently used by rad- 
ical thinkers in France irf the 18th century, became a shib- 
boleth of the French Eevolutionists. Thomas Paine adopted it 
as the title of his famous reply to Burke's Eeflections on the 
devolution in France. These natural rights of men are em- 
phasized in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. Many modern political thinkers disagree with this 
doctrine of ' ' natural rights. ' ' 

28. 20. Lowell was evidently quoting from memory the opening 
lines of Coleridge's Ode to France. His memory tricked him 
for the first line should read — 

*'The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain." 

29. 21. See Mac})etli, Act II, Scenes 2 and 3. 

22. An expression of despair. See I Samuel, iv, 21. 

30. 23. Joseph Priestly (1733-1804), a nonconformist minister 
of liberal tendencies, famous in the history of science as well 
as of religion. He was mobbed in Birmingham in 17i:.'l but 
not so much for his religious opinion^ as for his sympathies 
with the French Eevolution. He spent his last years in 
America. 

SI. 24. The fear that democracy will reduce all to a "dead 



34 Democracy Today 

level" has frequently been entertained. In his volume on 
Walt Whitman, J. A. Symonds discusses the question whether 
there can be any great poetry of democracy, seeing that dem- 
ocracies must lack the contrasts of older civilizations. The 
fear is groundless. 
32- 25. Theodore Parker, 1810-1860, an advanced New England 
theologian and social reformer and a courageous abolitionist. 
iSee Note 2 to Lincoln 's Gettysburg Address. 

26. Dekker's beautiful lines deserve quotation. 

''The best of men 
That e'er wore earth about him, was a sufferer, 
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit, 
The first true gentleman that ever breathed." 
See Thomas DeTcTcer, edited by Ernest Ehys. The iMermaia 
Series, London, 1887, page 190. 

27. Perhaps more correctly Jelal-ed-din-Eumi, 1207-1273, a 
Persian mystic poet, author of Mathnawi. 

27a. The idea that any real democracy must rest on a basis 
of ideals is one frequently encountered in President Wilson's 
speeches and admirably Gharacterizes the American attitude. 
53. 28. The belief that a democracy could only exist in a small 
or city-state where all citizens could assemble for deliberation, 
was frequently held and supported by arguments drawn from 
history. The Greek republics as well as the Italian republics 
of the late Middle Age and Eenaissance and the northern 
Free Cities or Communes had all been small. The Swiss repub- 
lics, like Geneva, were often cited and indeed Geneva was the 
state Kousseau had most in mind in writing his Social Con- 
tract. We must not forget that our immensely larger democ- 
racy with its universal manhood suffrage and representative 
government had no precedent in antiquity or indeed in modern 
times. 

28a. The reference is vague, but Lowell is probably referring 
to England. Queen Victoria was also Empress of India. 

29. This is an extreme statement but true in the sense that 
the framers of the Constitution did not wish to extend suffrage 
to all citizens regardless of qualifications and that they dis- 



V Biographical ayid Explanatory Notes 35 

'age 

trusted unreasoning popular movements. It was for this reason 
that they "put as many obstacles as they could contrive, not 
in the way of the people's will, but of their whim." It was 
for this reason that they divided the functions of government 
into legislative, judicial, and executive. In adopting this sys- 
tem of * * checks and balances ' ' they were following Montes- 
quieu. On all this see the Constitution, Appendix. 

34. 30. The French Eevolution had tried to throw overboard all 
previous French tradition. They were to begin with the Year 
One, a new calendar, a new religion, an entirely new system of 
government based, so they thought, on reason alone and made 
to order. Of all these radical innovations the metric system 
alone survived. 

31. It was quite generally held that democracy leads to 
anarchy since the people are unwilling to curb themselves. 
Anarchy in its turn disappears before the power of some ambi- 
tious despot. This in rough outline was the history of the 
French nation from the overthrow of the monarchy to the 
Terror, this anarchy giving way in its turn to the supremacy 
of Napoleon. The same process had frequently occurred in the 
G-reek republics and in the Italian Cities of the Renaissance. 

35. 32. This paragraph makes the task of the founders of the 
Republic and the Framers of the Constitution seem far easier 
than it really was. The local state governments were very 
unwilling to surrender any of their rights or property and the 
smaller ones were jealous of the larger. Maryland had signed 
the Articles of Confederation only in 1781 and this first Fed- 
eration was altogether unsatisfactory. State legislated against 
state, especially in commercial matters, and there was no cen- 
tral authority to which all would yield. Yet it was impossible 
to frame a Constitution until 1787 and the difficulties encoun- 
tered were serious indeed. See Madison 's Journal of the Con' 
stitutional Convention, edited by E. H. Scott, Scott, Foresman 
& Co., 1892. 

33. The Missouri Compromise (1821) admitted Missouri as 
a slave state and forbade slavery in territory west of Missouri 
and north of 36° 30', It perpetuated the situation in which 



36 Democracy Today ^' 

J?age 

Lincoln said the union could not exist. It made us lialf slave 
and half free. Lowell was bitterly opposed to slavery, 

37. 34. Lowell's memory is again at fault, though what Carlyle 
said was ''just as bad." In Latter Day Pamphlets I, ''The 
Present Time," Carlyle pays his compliments to America as 
follows". "Koast-goose with apple-sauce, she (America) is not 
much. Koast-goose with apple sauce for the poorest working 
man. ' ' 

35. Lowell probably had in mind the Essay, Of Seditions and 
Troubles, though Bacon does not say this in so many words. 
He does say that ' ' the rebellions of the belly are the worst.' ' 

36. In this matter Lowell himself was far-sighted. At the 
time of this address there was relatively little fear of trusts. 
The agitation and legislation against them became important 
in the next decade. 

38. 37. From Pippa Passes III. The last line should read, 
''When earth was nigher heaven than now." 

39- 38. This was the objection of the English historian and 
political thinker, Lecky, who says, "One of the great divisions 
of politics in our day is coming to be whether, at the last 
resort, the world should be governed by its ignorance or by 
its intelligence. According to the one party, the preponderat- 
ing power should be with education and property. According 
to the other, the ultimate source of power, the supreme right 
of appeal and control, belongs legitimately to the majority of 
the nation told by the head — or in other words, to the poorest, 
the most ignorant, the most incapable, who are necessarily the 
most numerous." In opposition to this, see Whitman's Dem- 
ocratic Vistas where he holds that the object of democracy is 
not better government, but a better people, and that universal 
suffrage tends to raise the level of intelligence and self- 
respect. Lowell's answer, slightly different, follows in the 
next paragraph. 

41. 39. In volunteer regiments at the outset of the Civil War 
the command was often given to him who raised them; or 
officers, often with no or insufficient training, were elected. 
The system was a poor one. 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 37 

Pag6 

42. 40. Piccadilly, the thoroughfare for the promenades of the 
elegant and fashionable in London, so called 'from the picca- 
dill, a small stiff collar, affected by the gallants of the time of 
James I. 

41. George Hudson, 1800-1871, one of the first ''promoters" 
of EnglisTi railways. Eisen to a position of undeserved wealth 
and prominence, he was ruined by the discovery of frauds in 
his procedure. The English public turned on him; Carlyle fre- 
quently held him up to scorn and called him ' ' the big swollen 
gambler. '^ See Latter Day Pamphlets. The project to erect 
a statue to him, never carried through, called forth Carlyle 'a 
fiercest denunciations. 

42. Napoleon III, 1808-1873. Elected president of France 
in 1848 he made himself emperor in 1852, and retained thia 
title until captured in the Franco-Prussian War, for tho 
unfortunate outcome of which his lack of political foresight 
was largely responsible. He was a man of more ambition than 
character. 

44. 43. This phrase is still used by French radicals and social- 
ists. See also Lincoln's speech at New Haven in Introduction 
to Lincoln, page 247. 

44. The English have no written constitution. 

45. 45. Eobert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke, 1811-1892, was a 
British liberal statesman and at one time Chancellor of the 
Exchequer. He is perhaps best known for his brilliant speeches. 
Though the phrase quoted has always been credited to Lowe, 
what he really said in the famous address in Edinburgh iu 
1867 was that it is necessary '*to induce our masters to learn 
their letters. ' ' 

46. It is hardly necessary to say that Lowell is speaking of 
the socialism of an earlier day and that his idea is imperfect. 
Modern socialism does not insist on equalizing all fortunes or 
incomes. Advanced socialists today claim that they are work- 
ing to overthrow the capitalistic regime and create a ''coop- 
erative commonwealth'' in which the state is employer and in 
which unnecessary competition is eliminated. Communism, men- 
tioned later (p. 46), would have all property held in common. 



38 Democracy Today 

Page 

47. Henry George, 1839-1897, author of Progress and Pov- 
erty, in which he advocated the theory of taxing land exclus- 
ively. George did not wish land to be ''divided" primarily, 
but to destroy private property in land, which he held should 
no more exist than private property in light or air. Under 
his system each user of property would pay to the government 
a tax on his land. This land tax or ''single tax" would be 
sufficient to cover all governmental expenses. 
46- 48. Compare this with Balzac's statement in The Country 
Doctor : ' ' There is something in the nature of power which 
makes it tend to conserve itself. ' ' 

Stephen Grover Cleveland (1837-1908) 

Stephen Grover Cleveland was President of the United States 
1885-1889 and 1893-1897. By the death of his father he was 
forced as a lad to make his own way in the world without 
the benefit of a college education. A man of simple habits, 
he never sought to attract attention. The quality of forceful 
leadership which he possessed and ever exercised in the interest 
of good citizenship forced him upon the attention of the 
country and brought him to the Presidency. 

His career as President was marked by independence in 
forming his judgments and intrepidity in the execution of 
judgments once formed. He never sought favor and had the 
high courage to follow the unpopular course. Time justified 
him and has proved the wisdom of his decisions. 

The address delivered before the Union League Club of Chi- 
<;ago has as its subject Patriotism and Holiday Observance. 
The introductory paragraphs deal with the observance of holi- 
days generally and have no immediate bearing on our subject, 
and are therefore omitted. The second and larger part of the 
speech, dealing with Washington and Patriotism, is given 
without change. 

The Message of Washington 

49- 1. Washington served during the seven years of the Revolu- 
tion with no expectation or hope of compensation. He was 
later reimbursed only for the expenditures which as com- 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 39 

mander-in-chief he had made out of his private purse. He 
loved his home but in this long period could visit it but twice- 
Fond of retirement as he was, he prepared his Farewell Address 
at the end of his first term (1793) and was prevailed upon to 
accept a second only because of the very threatening condition 
of our relations with France and England. Yet after his 
retirement when war seemed imminent with France he again, in 
1798, accepted the heavy responsibility of commander-in-chief 
of the provisional army that was being raised. 

5'' 2. From Othello, Act V, scene 2. 

52. 3. The letter was written at Mount Vernon January 29, 1789. 
In the same letter he says, in reply to Lafayette's congratula- 
tions on his election, * ' I shall assume the task with the most 
unfeigned reluctance, and witli a real diffidence." 

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) 

Theodore Roosevelt, born 1858, was graduated from Harvard 
University in 1880. Distinguished sportsman, soldier, and man 
of letters, he was twenty-sixth President of the United States, 
1901-1909. His earlier policy was an advocacy of the "Square 
Deal" between capital and labor with hands off except in case 
of unfairness on the part of either contestant. His later policy 
has been strongly for legislation in the interest of the wage- 
earner and the economically unfortunate. He was leader of 
the Progressive Party, 1912. He was an ardent advocate of uni- 
versal military training and was recognized abroad as the type 
of American man of action. He died January 6, 1919. 

WooDROw Wilson (1856 ) 

Woodrow Wilson, born in Virginia in 1856, is the twenty- 
eighth President of the United States. After graduation from 
Princeton University, he studied and practiced law, theii turned 
to teaching. After serving eight years as President of Prince- 
ton University, he was elected Governor of New Jersey 1911, 
and President of the United States 1913. The leader of the 
nation in the third great crisis in its history, he has won the 
confidence of the people by his patience, earnestness, and high 
sense of our national destiny. One of the greatest masters of 



40 Democracy Today 

Page 

style in our time, his addresses are regarded both here and in 
Europe, as among the most important documents in the history 
of the world war. The earlier addresses given in this volume 
deal with problems of citizenship, patriotism, and democracy. 
The later ones are landmarks in our struggle against Germany 
and autocracy. 

The Meaning of the Declaration of Independence 
63. 1. John Hancock of Massachusetts (1737-1793) was chosen 
president of the Continental Congress in 1775 and his name 
stands at the head of the signers of the Declaration, 
84. 2. On the 10th of June, 1776, a committee of five was 
appointed to draw up the Declaration. It consisted of Thomas 
Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Eoger Sherman, 
and Eobert R. Livingston. This committee assigned the com- 
position to Jefferson. The draft which he brought in was 
modified by omitting certain passages and articles which it 
was thought might weaken the force of the Colonies' case. 
The phraseology is very largely Jefferson's, 
65- 3. Before the outbreak of the war in Europe and for some 
time thereafter, there was a financial depression in the country, 
of which the President's opponents took advantage in order to 
criticize the legislative program which he was carrying into 
execution. 
66. 4. The banking and currency law, known as the Federal 
Eeserve Act, was approved after much opposition and discus- 
sion, December 23, 1913. It was a constructive measure based 
on the work of financiers, bankers, statesmen, and economists. 
Under it the United States is divided into twelve districts, each 
with a Reserve Bank which is the center of the banking system 
of that district. In operation it has proved itself successful 
and a decided advance upon its predecessor, the National Bank- 
ing System. 
69. 5. At this time the President was being severely criticized for 
his refusal to declare war or intervene in Mexico to protect 
the property rights of American citizens. 
71. 6. The Panama Canal Act of 1912, providing for the perma- 
nent government of the Canal Zone and other regulations, was 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 41 

Page 

amended in a bill signed by the President June 15, 1914, known 
as the "Panama Tolls Exemption Kepeal Bill," In this bill 
the clause which exempted American coastwise vessels from 
paying tolls was repealed because it was in contravention of 
the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty with Great Britain. The repeal of 
the Tolls Exemption for American coastwise vessels gave the 
same advantages to English and foreign vessels that our own 
possessed. It meant sacrificing undoubted economic advantages 
in the interest of maintaining good faith. 

America First 

85. 1. This paragraph, and indeed this whole address, illustrates 
President Wilson ■ s attitude in the early period of the war. He 
felt at that time that America was out of and above the con- 
flict. The reasons for the change will be plain after reading 
the War Message, April 2nd, 1917, page 126, and the Flag Day 
Address, June 14, 1917, page 141, with their notes. 

88. 2. Woman Suffrage was voted upon and defeated in New 
Jersey October 19, 1915. 

The School of Citizenship 

8*« 1. How serious this movement was, and how it was started 
and fomented by agents of the German government will be 
plainer after reading the Flag Day Address, June 14, 1917, and 
the notes to its opening paragraphs. 

Abraham Lincoln 

•00. 1. Eamlet, Act III. scene 4. 

A World League for Peace 

102. 1. This address, which attracted much attention throughout 
the world, marks the culmination of President Wilson's earlier 
policy and of his efforts to establish peace between the belliger- 
ents without direct intervention. Even at the time of its deliv- 
ery, Germany, unknown to the President, was planning acts of 
aggression against the United States (see the Zimmermann 
Note, War Message, note 22). Her failure to make any satis- 
factory reply to the President 's Note of December 18th, in 
which he asked the belligerents to state their peace terms, 



42 Democracy Today 

Page 

showed only too plainly that her rulers were more interested 
in carrying out their plans for the extension of German 
dominion and the creation of Mittel-Europa (see Flag Day 
Address, notes 12-16) than they were in the establishment of any 
permanent peace based upon principles of right and justice. 
This address was directed not to the belligerents but to the 
American people, and its main interest lay in the fact that it 
presented the program for peace which the President was then 
willing to sanction. Its main thesis lay in its insistence that 
the time for a new "balance of power" (see Note 3) was past 
and that the peace to which we aspired must be based upon 
a concert of the powers acting to guarantee liberty and justice 
and ready to check and curb an}^ outlaw nation. The many 
Declarations of War upon Germany which followed upon her 
promulgation of ruthless submarine warfare seemed to fore- 
shadow the formation of such a concert of powers. 

'05. 2. See F^lag Day Addi^ess. 

106. 3. "Balance of power" is an old phrase in political history 
and international law. The idea goes back to the ancients 
and is in principle as follows: No nation or group of nations 
must be allowed to become so strong as to be able to enforce 
their will upon the others. In order to prevent this, members 
of the family of nations are justified in combining against 
another nation or group of nations. This idea of reestablish- 
ing the "balance of power" lay behind the formation of many 
of the coalitions in modern history, — those for instance against 
Louis XIV and Napoleon. The theory was complicated in the 
last hundred years by wars waged to establish national 
independence. In the later period of the nineteenth century 
the theory was illustrated in the attempted balance between the 
Dual Alliance of France and Russia and the Triple Alliance 
of Germany, Austria, and Italy. 

4. It is plain from the War Message that the President 
made a distinction between the German people and their rulers. 
It is no less plain from the Flag Day Address that he felt 
that the rulers of Germany, her military caste, her 
policy of inhumanity, and her plans of conquest must be 
defeated. 



Biograyhical and Explanatory Notes 43 

Page 

107. 5. The principles set forth in this and the following para- 
graphs were wholly at variance with the desires and purposes 
of Germany as they became plain at the end of 1917. Her 
contempt for the rights of small nations was only too evident 
in her treatment of Belgium and in her plans with respect to 
the smaller states of Europe as revealed in the Flag Day 
Address and its notes. 

6. The German autocracy was never willing to recognize 
this principle, of government by the consent of the governed. 
Prussia and the German Empire themselves were not governed 
in this way. (See Flag Day Address, Note 7.) Only a few 
years before the war the Emperor threatened to make 
Alsace-Lorraine, which was still governed like a conquered 
province, "a Prussian province." The Poles, who had been 
under German rule for over a century and a quarter, were still 
discriminated against; and it is unthinkable that Germany 

^ would ever willingly have founded a really autonomous Poland 
as suggested in the next paragraph. (See Flag Day Address, 
Note 18.) Carrying the principles here stated by Wilson into 
effect would have meant not only the complete nullification of 
Germany's plans in the war, but a reversal of her fundamental 
idea of social and national organization. 

'09. 7. Germany, the originator of submarine warfare on neutrals, 
had claimed that she was fighting 'for the freedom of the seas." 
With no color of right she had already sunk, to mention but 
one neutral, over six hundred Norwegian vessels, and her policy 
had brought forth from many previously friendly nations dec- 
larations of war against her. (See War Message, Note 9.) 
The German conception of freedom of the seas was clearly 
exhibited in her note to us of February 1, 1917. (Quoted 
in Flag Day Address, Note 4.) 

••'• 8, The Monroe Doctrine, proclaimed in 1823, insisted that 
no foreign power should colonize further or attempt "to extend 
the European system" to the Western Hemisphere. 

:'2. 9. How useless it was to propose peace to Germany on these 
terms will be only too evident when we read President Wilson's 
message to Congress, delivered less than two weeks later, sever- 
ing relations with Germany for the reasons there given. 



44 Democracy Today 

Page 

War Message 

These notes on the War Message are taken hy special 'permission 
from the text of the Presidents Message officially annotated hy the 
Committee on Public Information. {See Introduction, page 15.) 

•26. 1. President Wilson had the sworn duty to lay the facts 
before Congress and recommended to it the needful action. The 
Constitution prescribes his duties in such emergencies. 

It is worthy of note that the Constitution lays the duty 
and power of declaring war directly upon Congress, and th9,t 
it can not be evaded by Congressmen by any referendum to 
the voters, for which not the slightest constitutional provision 
is made. 

Congress performed this duty by voting on the war question, 
as requested. The vote of the Senate was 82 to 6 for war; of 
the House 373 to 50. Such comparative unanimity upon so 
momentous a question is almost unparalleled in the history of 
free nations. 

2. The German Chancellor in announcing this repudiation of 
all his solemn pledges in the Imperial Parliament (Eeichstag), 
on January 31, frankly admitted that this policy involved 
* ' ruthlessness ' ' toward neutrals. ' ' When the most ruthless 
methods are considered the best calculated to lead us to victory 
and to a swift victory . . . they must be employed. . . . 

3. The broken Sussex pledge. On May 4, 1916, the German 
government, in reply to the protest and warning of the United 
States following the sinking of the Sussex, gave this promise: 
That "merchant vessels both within and without the area 
declared a naval war zone shall not be sunk without warning, 
and without saving human lives, unless the ship attempt to 
escape or offer resistance." 

Germany added, indeed, that if Great Britain continued her 
blockade policy, she would have to consider ' ' a new situation. ' ' 

On May 8, 1916, the United States replied that it could not 
admit that the pledge of Germany was ' ' in the slightest degree 
contingent upon the conduct of any other Government ' ' (i. e., 
on any question of the English blockade). To this Germany 
made no reply at all, and under general diplomatic usage, when 
one nation makes a statement to another, the latest statement 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 45 

Page 

of the case stands as final unless there is a protest made. The 
promise made by Germany thus became a binding pledge. 
<27. 4. As to the proper usages in dealing with merchant vessels 
in war, here are the rules laid down some time ago for the 
American Navy (a fighting navy, surely), and these rules hardly 
differed in other navies, including the Russian and Japanese : 

"The personnel of a merchant vessel captured as a prize 
, . . are entitled to their personal effects. 

**A11 passengers not in the service of the enemy, and all 
women and children on board such vessels should be released 
and landed at a convenient port at the first opportunity. 

"Any person in the naval service of the United States who 
pillages or maltreats in any manner, any person found on board 
a merchant vessel captured as a prize, shall be severely pun- 
ished. ' ' 

' * The destruction of a vessel which has surrendered without 
first removing its officers and crew would be an act contrary 
to the sense of right which prevails even between enemies 
in time of war. ' ' 

5. The British hospital ships Asturias sunk March 20, and the 
Gloucester Castle. These vessels had been sunk although pro- 
tected by the most solemn possible of international compacts. 
Somewhat earlier in the war the great liner Britannic had been 
sunk while in service as a hospital ship, probably torpedoed by 
a U-boat. Until the end of the war the Germans continued 
their policy of murdering more wounded soldiers and their 
nurses by sinking more hospital ships. 

The Belgian relief ships referred to were probably the 
Camilla, Trevier, and the Feistein, but most particularly the 
large Norwegian steamer Storstad, sunk with 10,000 tons of 
grain for the starving Belgians. 
'28. 6. Mr. Wilson could have gone further back than "modern 
history. ' ' 

Even in the most troubled period of the Middle Ages there 
was consistent effort to spare the lives of nonbelligerents. Thus 
in the eleventh century not merely did the church enjoin the 
* * truce of God' ' which ordered all warfare to cease on four days 



46 Democracy Today 

/age 

of the week, but it especially pronounced its curse upon those 
who outraged or injured not merely clergymen and monks, but 
all classes of women. We also have ordinances from this ' * dark 
period" of history forbidding the interference with shepherds 
and their flocks, the damaging of olive trees, or the carrying 
off or destruction of farming implements. All this at a period 
when feudal barons are alleged to have been waging their wars 
with unusual ferocity. 

7. The following American vessels were sunk by submarines 
after Germany's decree of ruthless submarine policy, January 
31, 1917: 

February 3, 1917, Eousatonic ; February 13, 1917, Lyman M. 
Law; 'March 2, 1917, Algonquin; March 16, 1917, Vigilancia; 
March 17, 1917, City of Memphis; March 17, 1917, Illinois; 
March 21, 1917, Healdton (claimed to have been sunk off Dutch 
coast, and far from the so-called ''prohibited zone") ; April 1, 
1917, Azteo. 

8. In all, up to the declaration of war by us, 226 American 
citizens, many of them women and children, had lost their lives 
by the action of German submarines, and in most instances 
without the faintest color of international right. The most 
flagrant and horrible case was that of the Lusitania, sunk May 
7, 1915, with loss of 114 American lives. 

9. Practically all the civilized neutral countries of the earth 
protested against the German policy. 

*30. 10. Eight of American citizens to protection in their doings 
abroad and on the seas no less than at home. Decided by 
Supreme Court of United States. (Slaughter House Cases, 16 
Wall., 36.) 

* ' Every citizen . . . may demand the care and protection of 
the United States when on the high seas or within the jurisdic- 
tion of a foreign Government." 

See Cooley's Principles of Constitutional Law, third edition, 
page 273 (standard authority). 

Obviously a Government which can not or will not protect 
its citizens against a policy of lawless murder is unworthy of 
respect abroad or obedience at home. The protection of the 



Biographical and Explanatory I\otes 47 

Page 

lives of the innocent and law-abiding is clearly the very first 
duty of a civilized state. 
130. 11. Wars do not have to be declared in order to exist. The 
mere commission of warlike or unfriendly acts commences them. 
Thus the first serious clash in the Mexican war took place April 
24, 1846. Congress *' recognized" the state of war only on 
May 11 of that year. Already Gen. Taylor had fought two 
serious battles at Palo Alto and Eesaca de la Palma. 

Many other like cases could be cited ; the most recent was the 
outbreak of the war between Japan and Eussia. In 1904 the 
Japanese attacked the Russian fleet before Port Arthur, and 
only several days after this battle was war ' * recognized. ' ' 

If the acts of Germany were unfriendly, war in the strictest 
sense existed when the President addressed Congress. 
32. 12. So obvious was the military necessity of giving every pos- 
sible help to the present enemies of Germany that those who tried 
to thwart this were almost open to the very grave criminal charge 
of giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States. 
133. 13. Contrast these two standards: Bethmann-Hollweg ad- 
dressing the Reichstag, August 4, 1914: 

*'We are now in a state of necessity, and necessity knows no 
law. Our troops have occupied (neutral) Luxemburg and per- 
haps already have entered Belgium territory. Gentlemen, this 
is a breach of international law. The wrong — I speak openly — 
the wrong we hereby commit we will try to make good as soon 
as our military aims have been attained. 

' ' He who is menaced as we are, and is fighting for his highest 
possession, can only consider how he is to hack his way 
through. ' ' 

Or Frederick the Great again, the arch prophet of Prussian- 
ism, speaking in 1740 and giving the keynote to all his suc- 
cessors, **'The question of right is an affair of ministers. . . . 
It is time to consider it in secret, for the orders to my troops 
have been given," and still, again, **Take what you can; you 
are never wrong unless you are obliged to give back." (Per- 
kins, France under Louis XV, volume 1, pages 169-170.) 

Against this set the words of the first President of the Young 
American Republic, speaking at a time when the Nation was so 



48 Democracy Today 

Page 

weak that surely any kind of shifts could have been justified 
on the score of necessity. 
*33. Said George Washington in his first inaugural address 
(1789) : 

**. . . the foundation of our national policy will be laid in 
the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the 
preeminence of free government be exemplified by all the attri- 
butes which can win the affections of its citizens and command 
the respect of the world. I dwell on this prospect with every 
satisfaction which an ardent love for my country can inspire, 
since there is no truth more thoroughly established than that 
there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble 
union between virtue and happiness; between duty and advan- 
tage; between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnani- 
mous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and 
felicity; since we ought to be no less persuaded that the pro- 
pitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that , 
disregards the eternal rule?; of order and right which Heaven 
itself has ordained ; and since the preservation of the sacred fire 
of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of govern- 
ment are justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, as finally, staked 
on the experiment intrusted to the hands of the American 
people. ' ' 

The great war was for a large part being waged to settle 
whether the American or the Prussian standard of morality 
was valid. 

The constitution of Prussia remained practically unchanged 
and the electoral districts and three class voting system 
of nearly 70 years ago still existed in 1918. Liberal industrial 
and socialistic elements in the great modern cities and manu- 
facturing areas were without adequate representation in the 
Prussian Diet, and the old country districts were practically 
"rotten boroughs" where the peasant who voted by voice, not 
written ballot, was at the mercy of his feudal noble landlord. 
It was the latter who backed the throne and its autocratic 
power so long as the policy suited his narrow provincial 
militaristic views formed in the days of Frederick the Great 
and his despotic father and revived and glorified by Bismarck. 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 49 

page 

»33. 14. When the crisis was precipitated late in July, 1914, there 
was a strong peace-party in Germany, and earnest protests were 
made against letting Austrian aggression against Serbia start a 
world conflagratior. In Berlin on July 29, twenty-eight mass 
meetings were held to denounce the proposed war, and one of 
them is said to have been attended by 70,000 men. The 
Vorwaerts (the great organ of the socialists) declared on that 
■day, * ' the indications proved beyond a doubt that the camarilla 
of war lords is working with absolutely unscrupulous means to 
carry out their fearful designs to precipitate an international 
war and to start a world-wide fire to devastate Europe. ' ' On 
the 31st this same paper asserted that the policy of the German 
Government was ' ' utterly without conscience. ' ' Then came the 
declaration of *'war emergency" (Kriegsgefakr), mobiliza- 
tion, martial law, and any expression of public opinion was 
stilled in Germany. 

15. The German people had not the slightest share in shaping 
the events which led up to the declaration of war. The German 
Emperor was clothed by tlie imperial constitution with prac- 
tically autocratic power in all matters of foreign policy. The 
Reichstag had not even a consultative voice in such matters. 
The German constitution (Article 11) gave to the Emperor 
specific power to "declare war, conclude peace, and enter into 
alliances." The provision that only defensive wars might be 
declared by the Emperor alone put the power in his hands 
to declare the late war without consulting any but the 
military group, for no power in modern times has ever admitted 
that it waged aggressive warfare. William II declared this 
war without taking his people into the slightest confidence 
until the final deed was done. 

As for William II, speeches without number can be cited to 
show his sense of his own autocratic authority — e. g., speaking 
at Konigsberg, in 1910 — ''Looking upon myself as the instru- 
ment of the Lord, regardless of the views and the opinions of 
the hour, I go on my way. ' ' And another time : * ' There is but 
one master in this country; it is I, and I will bear no other." 
He has also been ^ery fond of transforming an old Latin adage, 
making it read ; ' * The will of the king is the highest law. ' ' 



50 Democracy Today 

Page 

16. President Wilson probably had in mind such wars as those 
of Louis XIV, waged by that King almost solely for his own 
glory and interest and with extremely little heed to the small 
benefit and great suffering they brought to France. The War 
of the Spanish Succession (begun in 1701) was particularly 
such a war. History, of course, contains a great many others 
begun from no worthier motive, including several conducted by 
Prussia and earlier by Philip II of Spain. 
♦34. 17. There is abundant evidence that the situation in Europe 
in July, 1914, was regarded by the German ''jingo" party — 
Von Tirpitz, Bernhardi, et al. — as peculiarly favorable. Eussia 
was busy rearming her army, and her railway system had not 
yet been properly developed for strategic purposes. France was 
vexed with labor troubles, a murder trial was heaping scandal 
upon one of her well known politicians, and her army was 
reported by her own statesmen as sadly unready. England 
seemed on the point of being plunged into a civil war by the 
revolt of a large fraction of Ireland. 

Such a convenient crippling of all the three great rivals of 
Germany might never come again. The murder of the arch- 
duke of Austria at Serajevo came, therefore, as a most con- 
venient occasion for a stroke which would either result in a 
great increase of Teutonic prestige or enable Germany to fight 
with every possible advantage. 

18. The great humanitarian aims of The Hague peace con- 
ferences of 1899 and 1907 were the limitation of armaments 
and the compulsory arbitration of international disputes. 
Unanimity among the world powers was essential to the success 
of both. None dared disarm unless all would do so. The great 
democracies, Great Britain, France, and the United States, 
favored both propositions, but Germany, leading the opposition, 
prevented their adoption. She agreed with reluctance to a con- 
vention for optional arbitration, but refused at the second con- 
ference even to discuss disarmament. [See Scott, James Brown, 
The Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907, I, index "Arm- 
aments" and "Arbitration."] 
'35. 19. The whole autocratic regime has been imposed on a people 
whose instincts and institutions are fundamentally democratic. 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 51 

Page 

Tihe deposed Romanoff dynasty began in an election among the 
nobles. Peter the Great and the more despotic of his suc- 
cessors created largely by imitation and adaptation of German 
bureaucracy the machinery with which they ruled. Underneath 
this un-Russian machinery of despotism Russian communal and 
local life has preserved itself with wonderful vitality. 
135. 20. Besides undoubtedly many matters which from reasons of 
j)ublic policy the Government could not publish, the House of 
Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, when it presented 
the war resolution following the President's message, went on 
formal record as listing at least twenty-one crimes or unfriendly 
acts committed upon our soil with the connivance of the German 
Government after the European war began. Among these were: 

Inciting Hin<ioos within the United States to stir up revolts 
in India, and supplying them with funds for that end, contrary 
to our neutrality laws. 

Running a fraudulent passport office for German reservists. 
This was supervised by Capt. von Papen of the German 
Embassy. 

Sending German agents to England to act as spies, equipped 
with American passports. 

Outfitting steamers to supply German raiders, and sending 
them out of American ports in defiance of our laws. 

Sending an agent from the United States to try to blow up 
the International Bridge at Vanceboro, Me. 

Furnishing funds to agents to blow up factories in Canada. 

Five different conspiracies, some partly successful, to manu- 
facture and place bombs on ships leaving United States ports. 
For these crimes a number of persons have been convicted; also 
Consul-General Bopp, of San Francisco (a very high German 
official accredited to the United States Government), has been 
convicted of plotting to cause bridges and tunnels to be 
destroyed in Canada. 

Financing newspapers in this country to conduct a propa- 
ganda serviceable to the ends of the German Government. 

Stirring up anti-American sentiment in Mexico and disorders 
generally in that country, to make it impossible for the United 
States to mix in European affairs. 



52 Democracy Today 

Page 

German military usage had been quite in this spirit, how- 
ever, and approved of such doings. (See German ^yar Code, 
standard translation, page 85.) 

"Bribery of enemies' subjects, acceptance of offers of treach- 
ery, utilization of discontented elements in the population, sup- 
port of pretenders and the like, are permissible; indeed, 
international law is in no way opposed to the exploitation of 
crimes of third parties." 
136. 21. A Prussiatiized Germany, triumphant in Europe and dom- 
inant on the seas, would have found occasion to strike down 
America in its isolation and make of us the over-seas tributary 
of a new Roman Empire. There can be no question that the 
future of democracy and of independent national life was liang- 
ing in the balance in this struggle. 

22. The famous "Zimmermann note," exposed by our Govern- 
ment March 1, is a document that should stick in the memo- 
ries of all Americans. It was composed on January 19, 
1917, at a time when Germany and America were officially 
very good friends, and the date was just three days before Mr. 
Wilson appeared in the Senate with his scheme for a league to 
assure peace and justice to the world. 

Zimmermann admitted the authenticity of the note, and only 
deplored that it had been discovered. The significant parts were 
these : 

''Berlin, January 19, 1917. 
"On February 1 we intend to begin submarine warfare 
unrestricted. In spite of this, it is our intention to keep neutral 
■ the United States of America. 

"If this attempt is not successful, we propose an alliance on 
the following basis with Mexico: That we shall make war 
together and together make peace. We shall give general finan- 
cial support, and it is understood that Mexico is to reconquer 
the lost territory in New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. The 
details are left to you for settlement." 

The whole dispatch was so grows a revelation of interna- 
tional immorality that German-American papers immediately 
denounced it as a forgery, only to have its genuineness brazenly 
acknowledged and defended by Berlin. 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 53 

23. It is worthy of note that although nearly all the nations 
opposed to Germany concluded the so-called ' ' cooling off ' ' arbi- 
tration treaties with the United States, negotiated by Mr. 
Bryan, Germany, although indulging in certain meaningless 
talk about ^'approving of the principle" of arbitration, 
declined to join in the compacts. 

There was no arbitration treaty that could be invoked when 
trouble arose with Germany. 
7. 24. "Fair play" had small part in the Prussian military' 
usage, however. (See German War Code, authorized translation, 
pages 1-3 and 52.) J. Murray, London, 1915'. 

**A war conducted with energy can not be directed merely 
against the combatants of the enemy State and the positions 
they occupy, but will and must in like manner seek to destroy 
the total intellectual and material resources of the latter. 
Humanitarian claims, such as the protection of men and their 
goods, can only be taken into consideration in so far as the 
nature and object of the war permit." 

See also Clausewitz (the Prussian military authority and oft- 
quoted oracle). Treatise "On War" {Vom Kriege) V: Kap. 
14 (3). 

Speaking of the desirability of crushing down a hostile 
country by requisitions, etc., he commends it because of ''the 
fear of responsibility, punishment, and ill-treatment, which in 
such cases presses on the whole population like a general 
weight." This recourse (of requisitions) has "no limits except 
those of the exhaustion, impoverishment, and devastation of the 
country. ' ' 

25. Austria had a serious clash with the United States in the 
Ancona case late in 1915, when Americans perished, thanks to 
the ruthless action of an Austrian submarine. In reply to 
American protests Austria promised to order her commanders to 
behave with humanity, and (compared, at least, to her German 
allies) she kept her word with reasonable exactness. 

On April 8, 1917, however, Austria, probably acting under 
German pressure, broke off diplomatic relations with the United 
States without waiting for action by our Government, and the 



54 Democracy Today 

Page 

same was done a little later by Germany's other obedient 
vassal, the Sultan of Turkey. 
'38. 26. No one can accuse Mr. Wilson of the least precipitancy in 
bringing matters to an issue. Of course, on the contrary, his 
persistent attempts to bring the German Government to recog- 
nize the claims of reason and humanity caused him to be 
bitterly criticized. Despite this criticism he patiently and 
steadily held to the policy "to wait until facts became unmis- 
takable and were susceptible of only one interpretation." 
{Sussex note, April 18, 1916.) 

Here is a partial list of the stages in the U-boat campaign : 

(1) December 24, 1914. Admiral von Tirpitz throws out 
hints in a newspaper interview of a wholesale torpedoing policy. 
He directly asks, ''What will America say?" This was 
considerably before the so-called English blockade was causing 
Germany any serious food problem. 

(2) February 4, 1915. German Government proclaims a war 
zone within which any ship may be sunk unwarned. 

(3) February 10, 1915. Mr. Wilson tells German Govern- 
ment it will be held to ' ' strict accountability ' ' if any American 
rights are violated in this way. 

(4) iMay 1, (dated April 22), 1915. German Embassy pub- 
lishes in New York morning papers warning against taking 
passage on ships which our Government had told the people 
they had a perfect right to take. 

The Lusitania sailed at 12:20 noon, May 1. 

(5) May 7, 1915. Sinking of Lusitania. 

(6) May 13, 1915. Mr. Wilson's ''first Lusitania" note. 

(7) May 28, 1915. Germany's reply defending the sinking 
of the Lusitania. 

(8) June 9, 1915. Mr. Wilson's "second Lusitania" note. 

(9) July 21, 1915. Mr. Wilson's "third Lusitania" note 
(following more unsatisfactory German rejoinders.) 

(10) August 19, 1915. Sinking of the Arabic , whereupon von 
Bernstorff gave an oral pledge for his Government that here- 
after German submarines would not sink "liners" without 
warning. 

(11) February, 1916. (After still more debatable sinkings) 
Germany makes proposals looking toward ' ' assuming liability ' ' 
for the Lusitania victims, but the whole case is soon complicated 
again by the "armed ship" issue. 

(12) March 24, 1916. Sinking of the Sussex passenger 
vessel with Americans on board. 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 55 

age 

(13) April 10, 1916. Germany cynically tells United States 
she can not be sure whether she sunk the Sussex or not, 
although admitting one of her submarines was active close to 
the place of disaster. 

(14) April 18, 1916. President Wilson threatens Germany 
with breach of diplomatic relations if Sussex and similar inci- 
dents are repeated. 

(15) May 4, 1916. Germany grudgingly makes the promise 
that ships will not be sunk without warning. 

(16) October 8, 1916. German submarine appears off Ameri- 
can coast and sinks British passenger steamer Stepliano with 
many American passengers (vacationists returning from New- 
foundland) on board. Loss of life almost certain had not 
American men-of-war been on hand to pick up the refugees. 

[From this time until final break several other vessels sunk 
under circumstances which made it at least doubtful whether 
Germany was living up to her pledges.] 

(17) January 31, 1917. Germany tears up her promises and 
notifies Mr. Wilson she will begin ' ' unrestricted submarine 
w'ar. ' ' 

(18) February 3, 1917. Mr. Wilson gives Count Bernstorff 
his passports and recalls Ambassador Gerard from Berlin. 

In all modern history it may be doubted if there is another 
chapter displaying such prolonged patience, forbearance, and 
conciliatoriness as that shown by Mr. Wilson and Mr. Lansing 
in the face of a long course of deliberate evasion and prevarica- 
tion to them personally, as well as outrage after outrage upon 
the property, and still more, upon the lives of very many Ameri- 
can citizens. 
39. 27. The treason statutes of the United States have seldom 
been invoked, but they exist and possess teeth. 

It is treason to ' ' levy war against the United States, adhere 
to their enemies, or give them aid or comfort." (Chapter 1, 
section 1, Eevised Statutes.) The penalty is death, or imprison- 
ment for at least five years, and a fine of at least $10,000. 

It is " misprision of treason ' ' to know of any treasonable 
plots or doings and fail to report the same to the authorities. 
The penalty is seven years' imprisonment. The penalty for 
inciting a rebellion or insurrection is ten years, and the crime of 
entering into any correspondence with a foreign government 
xf) influence it in any dispute with the United States, or to 



56 Democracy Today 

Page 

defeat any measures taken by our Government, calls for three 
years' imprisonment. (Chapter 1, section 5.) There is also a 
penalty of six years' imprisonment for any seditious conspiracy 
to oppose the authority of the United Sta,tes. 
139. These laws President Wilson had, by proclamation (April 6, 
1917), declared to be in full force. i 

''Giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the United 
States" has been defined in the courts (30 Federal Cases, No- 
18272), as— I 

*'In general, any act clearly indicating a want of loyalty to 
the Government and sympathy with its enemies, and which by 
fair construction is directly in furtherance of their hostile 
designs. ' ' Such deeds are, of course, liable to all the penalty 
of treason. 

In extreme cases also, of ''rebellion and invasion" the Con- 
stitution specifically gives the Government power to suspend 
the writ of habeas corpus (Constitution, x4.rticle I, section 9, 
paragraph 2) ; in other words, to arrest and imprison on mere 
suspicion without trial, and this was actually done in the Civil 
War. 

28. Abraham Lincoln (second inaugural address, 1865). 

' ' With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness 
in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the 
work we are in — to bind up one another's wounds, to care for 
him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and 
orphans; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and 
lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." 

Friedrich von Bernhardi (German lieutenant general, and 
acceptable mouthpiece, not of the whole German nation, but of 
the Prussian military caste which holds the German nation in 
its grip) : 

"Might is at once the supreme right, and the dispute as to 
•what is right is decided by the arbitrament of war" (page 23). 

"The inevitableness, the idealism, and the blessedness of war 
as the indispensable and stimulating law of development must 
be repeatedly emphasized (page 37). 

' ' Our people must learn to feel that the maintenance of peace 



BiographiGdl and Explanatory Xotes 57 

age 
never can or may be the goal of a policy" (page 37, "Germany 
and the Next War"). 

K)' 29. The last sentence is an adaptation of the close of Luther's 
defense at the Diet of Worms in 1521, "I can not do other- 
wise. God help me." 

Flag Day Addkess 

All the folloioing notes on the Flag Day Address are taken oy 
special permission from the text of the President's Address offi- 
cially annotated by the Committee on Puhlic Information. (ISee 
Introduction, page 15.) 

*2. 1. As for espionage, Konig, the head of the Hamburg- Amer- 
ican secret service, who was active in passport frauds, who 
induced Gustave Stahl to perjure himself and declare the 
Lu'sitania armed, and who plotted the destruction of the Wel- 
land Canal, in his work as a spy, passed under thirteen aliases 
in this country and Canada. As for the corruption of public 
opinion, it proceeded both openly and under cover. Dr. Dern- 
burg was the official missionary, and he and others went 
■up and down the land. Newspapers were started with Ger- 
man money and others received secret subsidies from the 
German Government. The accounts of large sums given in 
this way to buy up newspapers or individuals have been 
published. Most important of all, in a telegram, dated 
January 22, 1917, but not made public until later by the 
Secretary of State, von Bernstorff asked his Government for 
authority to expend $50,000 "in order, as on former occasions, 
to inilueiice Congress through the organization you know of." 
As for conspiracy in our midst, it took various forms under 
Capts. Boy-Ed, von Papen, von Rintelen, Tauacher, and von 
Igel, all directly connected with the German Government. 
For what unlawful and seditious purposes their money was 
spent — for bombs to blow up our merchant vessels and their 
crews, for evading our laws and supplying German raiders 
at sea, or for organizing disguised pro-German societies, is 
plain from the -von Igel papers seized by our Government. 



58 Democracy Today 

Page 

In others there is the implication that the German diplo- 
matists in America were involved in the Separatist movement 
in the Province of Quebec. The German agents spent $600,000 
on Huerta's abortive attempt in this country to start a revolu- 
tion in Mexico (1915). For the whole subject see files of 
'New York World and New York Times Index under "German 
and Austro-Hungarian conspirators," "German plots, etc., for 
1914-1917," Congressional Record, April 5, 1917, pp. 192, 193, 
and German Intrigue by the Committee on Public Information. 
J42. 2. They sought to destroy our industries by bringing about 
strikes and inducing men to quit work. Labor's National Peace 
Council attempted to bring about a strike among 23,000 
longshoremen (Gomper's statement. New York Times, Sept. 14, 
1915), and that was not the only attempt. Ambassador Dumba 
and Consul General von Nuber ran advertisements in various 
papers calling upon all loyal Austrians to quit work in muni- 
tion factories. German official documents, seized in Capt. von 
Igel's office, present as an argument against Austria-Hungary's 
cutting off the subsidy to a pretended employment bureau, 
which was in reality a branch of the German Secret Service, 
that this "Liebau Bureau" had been highly successful in 
fomenting strikes and disturbances at munition factories. ( Cf . 
letter of Mar. 24, 1916, to Ambassador von Bernstorff.) Dum- 
ba's letter,' reporting his plans to bring about disturbances in 
the Bethlehem Steel Works, was seized by the British among 
the belongings of Mr. Archibald, a subsidized American corre- 
spondent, and Dumba's recall was thereupon demanded by our 
Department of State. 

The Germans sought to arrest our commerce, not by sub- 
marines alone, but by blowing up ships in harbor and at 
sea. They put bombs in coal bunkers and tied them to 
rudder posts. Models of Robert Fay's contrivances for this 
latter purpose were exhibited at his trial, and he spared 
passenger ships only because twin screws baffled him. By Fay's 
own confession and that of his partner the money for this 
treachery and murder came from the German secret police. 
'43. 3. The reference is to the note sent by Dr. Alfred Zimmer- 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 59 

?age 

mann, foreign secretary, to von Eckhart, German minister to 
Mexico, requesting him to seek an alliance against us with 
Mexico and Japan. See Note 22 to the War Message. The 
note was intercepted, and when in March its contents were made 
known it set popular feeling aflame and more than any other 
act of aggression on the part of dermany aroused the Amer- 
ican public. 

143. 4. Possibly the most glaring instance of German official 
effrontery was the permission to regular American passenger 
steamers to continue their sailings undisturbed after February 
1, 1917, if— 

" (a) The port of destination is Falmouth. 

" (&) Sailing to or coming from that port course is taken via 
the Scilly Islands and a point 50° N. 20° W. 

"(c) The steamers are marked in the following way, which 
must not be allowed to other vessels in American ports: On 
ship's hull and superstructure three vertical stripes, 1 meter 
wide, each to be painted alternately white and red. Each mast 
should show a large flag checkered white and red and the stern 
the American national flag. Care should be taken that, during 
dark, national flag and painted marks are easily recognizable 
from a distance, and that the boats are well lighted throughout. 

" (d) One steamer a week sails in each direction with arrival 
at Falmouth on Sunday and departure from Falmouth on 
"Wednesday. 

" (e) The United States Government guarantees that no con- 
traband (according to German contraband list) is carried by 
those steamers." 

The German ambassador to the Secretary of State, January 
31, 1917. 

5. A check for $5,000 to J. F. J. Archibald for ' ' propaganda 
work, ' ' and a receipt from Edwin Emerson, the war corre- 
spondent, for $1,000 "traveling expenses" were among the 
documents found in von Igel's possession. Many persons in 
places of influence an-d au-thority were appr-oached. 

Others likewise bearing English names were persuaded to 
take leading places in similar organizations which concealed 



60 Democracy Today 

their origin and real purpose. The American Embargo Con- 
ference arose out of the ashes of Labor's Peace Council, and 
its president was American, though the funds were not. Still 
others tampered with were journalists who lent themselves to 
the German propaganda, and who went so far as to serve as 
couriers between the Teutonic embassies and Vienna and Berlin. 
143. 6. At 5 p. m., Aug. 1, the German Army was formally mobil- 
ized, although there is much evidence that it had been mobilized 
for days, and at 7 p. m., war was declared against Eussia. 
On Aug. 4 the Eeichstag, the representative body of the Ger- 
man Nation, met, and for the first time learned officially what 
had been done. Between July 23 and August 4 the German 
Government had put itself in the posture of war against Eussia, 
France, Great Britain, and Belgium, and had violated Luxem- 
burg, and yet had asked no advice or consent of the German 
people. That is why it is proper to say that the German people 
did not begin the war, or the mass of the people originate it. 
Perhaps the most conclusive proof of this lies in the efforts 
made by the Government to convince the people that the war 
was strictly a defensive one. ' * Envious people everywhere are 
compelling us to our just defense, ' ' said the Kaiser on July 
31; and again, ''The sword is being forced into our hand." 
By such speeches and by the circulation of a report (since 
acknowledged by high German officials to be false) that France 
had already attacked Germany, the German people were aroused. 
Even the Invasion of Belgium was represented to be a defen- 
sive measure, and it was declared by the Chancellor in the 
Eeichstag and by everybody else in authority to have been due 
to certain knowledge that France herself was about to invade 
Belgium. Lieut. -Gen. Freytag-Loringhoven, Chief of the Sup- 
plementary Staff, later made it clear that this was not true. 
He admitted that the initial success of the German arms was 
largely owing to the French expecting the German advance 
elsewhere. (^. Y. Times, Aug. 12, 1917.) 

7. The German Empire and its constitution was formed 
not by the people but by the twenty-five kings and 
princes of Germany, headed by the King of Prussia. Bismarck 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 61 

age 
wrote the constitution and regarded it as adopted when the 
German princes and kings approved it. It was never submitted 
to a vote of the people. It is clear at once how perfect this 
constitution was. It was perfect from the standpoint of the 
kings and princes, especially of the Kaiser, who, as King of 
Prussia, controlled two-thirds of the people and two-thirds of 
the land of Germany. 

43. Bismarck did not choose to leave the people out entirely; 
thus the German constitution provided for an elected house, 
called the Reichstag. It was chosen by manhood suffrage of 
those over twenty-five years of age. The districts established 
in 1871 were unchanged up to 1918. This meant that the large 
cities which had grown up since 1871 and contained the labor- 
ing vote were but partially represented, and the German Gov- 
ernment dared not change these districts, because it would 
mean an increased vote for the laboring classes and the Socialist 
Party. It need not have been, so fearful, for, under the consti- 
tution, the popular house was merely a great debating club, 
which might talk and go through the forms of considering 
legislation, but was not a real factor in the German Govern- 
ment. It was little more than a convenient piece of political 
scene-painting, and the room where it met w^as well called by 
one of the members the "Hall of Echoes." 

The real power in the German Parliament lay with the 
Bundesrat, a body of 61 members, which met in secret. It 
was composed of diplomats appointed by the kings and princes 
of Germany, Prussia having the largest number. These ambas- 
sadors voted at the direction of their sovereigns, and as the King 
of Prussia was the most powerful and appointed the chancellor, 
who presided over the Bundesrat, he had enough votes to veto 
any measure. The Bundesrat was not only safe from democracy 
but it was the body through which the Emperor, as King of 
Prussia, could really control Germany. Here were originated 
almost all bills, and all legislation had to be approved by the 
Bundesrat; this meant, in other words, by Prussia and its 
King, the Emperor. It is thus that Germany became Prus- 
sianized in its government and filled with the political ambi- 
tions and military ideals of a State whose best models of a 



62 Democracy Today 

Page 

ruler were still, in the twentieth century, Frederick the Great 
and his brutal father. 

143. It was this Government, comprised of a group of kings and 
princes, led by the King of Prussia, that the pro-Germans praised 
as the most democratic in the world. What they meant was that 
for the sake of keeping the people quiet and submissive to their 
military aims the autocracy granted them old-age pensions and 
clean streets, and in return expected them to send their sons to 
any war and to commit any act for the sake of a State where 
irresponsible medieval-minded sovereigns still believed in the 
twentieth century that they ruled by divine grace and were 
accountable only to God. But the god that they had in mind 
was a war god whom they created in their own image. 

This pictures but half of what we mean by autocracy, for it 
leaves out of account the government of the most powerful 
State in Germany, that of Prussia itself. When one knows that 
in Prussia the voters were divided into three classes according 
to their wealth, and one nobleman's or rich man's vote might be 
equal to that of 10,000 laborers, and that actually 4 per cent 
of the wealthy people counted for as much as 82 per cent of the 
laboring and poor class, some may think that this is efficient 
government; but the only people they could get to agree with 
them were the Prussian nobles, landowners, and capitalists. See 
Hazen, The German Government, published and distributed by 
the Committee on Public Information. 

The militaristic group which started the war without con- 
sulting the people's representatives were equally contemptuous 
of public opinion in conducting it. In England there were 
two sweeping changes in the cabinet in response to popular 
demand, and in France both cabinet ministers and army 
leaders were changed; but in Germany even when, after 
three years of war, popular discontent led to the fall of 
Bethmann-Hollweg, the first secret conferences concerning his 
successor were evidently with the army generals and then with 
the crown council at which the Crown Prince was present. The 
new chancellor, Michaelis, was so far from being the choice of 
the people that even the most hostile groups in the Reichstag 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 63 

'age 

did not know what to make of him. Michaelis was soon 
displaced by another puppet of the Emperor's, von Hertling, 
He was succeeded by Prince Maxmilian of Baden shortly before 
the signing of the armistice, 
w. 8. Revelations from Petrograd brought new evidence from the 
secret Russian archives of the Kaiser's intrigues against small 
states. In telegrams signed "Nicky" and "Willy," the Czar 
and the German Emperor are shown to have been arranging in 
1905 for a secret alliance endangering Denmark. In case of 
Avar with England, Denmark was to be treated as Belgium 
was in the great war, except that a preliminary effort 
was to be made to make the Danes see and accept the inevi- 
table. The German Emperor telegraphed on August 2, 1905, 
from Copenhagen, where he had gone to break ground for the 
nefarious scheme: 

"Considering great number of channels leading from Copen- 
hagen to London and proverbial want of discretion of the 
Danish court, I was afraid to let anything be known about our 
alliance, as it would immediately have been communicated to 
London, a most impossible thing so long as treaty is to remain 
secret for the present. 

"By long conversation with Isvolsky, however, I was able to 
gather that actual Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Raben, 
and a number of persons of influence have already come to the 
conviction that in case of war and impending attack on Baltic 
from foreign power Danes expect — their inability and helpless- 
ness to uphold even shadow of neutrality against invasion being 
evident — that Russia and Germany will immediately take steps 
to safeguard their interests by laying hands on Denmark and 
occupying it during the war. 

"As this would at the same time guarantee territory and 
future existence of dynasty and country, the Danes are slowly 
resigning themselves to this alternative and making up their 
minds accordingly. This being exactly what you wished and 
hoped for, I thought it better not to touch on the subject with 
Danes and refrained from making any allusions. 

"It is better to let the idea develop and ripen in their heads 



64 Democracy Today 

Page 

and let them draw final conclusions themselves, so that they 
will of their own accord be moved to lean upon us and fall in 
line with our two countries. Tout vient a qui salt attendre. 
['All things come to him who waits.'] 



''Willy." 

*44. 9, Some of the German conceptions and plans are indicated 
in the quotations that follow. These quotations are necessarily 
brief, and for that reason they may seem somewhat sharp, but 
they are none the less typical of the spirit that is to be found 
in scores of German pamphlets and books, in a wide range of 
newspapers, and, indeed, in the conversation of a large number 
of intelligent Germans. Unfortunately a powerful and increas- 
ing party were in favor of the policy of military aggression. 

"Room — they must make room. The western and southern 
Slavs — or we. Since we are the stronger, the choice will not 
be difficult. We must quit our modest waiting at the door. 
Only by growth can a people save itself." (Otto R. Tannen- 
berg, Gross-Deutschland : die Arbeit des 20ten Jahrhunderts 
[Greater Germany: the Work o"f the 20th Century], 1911, pp. 
74-75.) 

"We are of the race of the Thunderer; 
We will possess the earth. 
That is the old right of the Germans — 
To win land with the hammer. 

"This right of the Germans arises, let it be said once more, 
out of German civilization, the best on earth . . . for- 
ward, then, into the fight for German aims, and 'far as the 
hammer is hurled, let the earth be ours.'" (Bley, Die Welt- 
stellung des Deutschtums [Germany's Position in the World], 
1897, pp. 27-29.) 

"Our fathers have left us much to do. The German people 
is so situated in Europe that it need only run and take 
whatever it requires. . . . Today . . . it is for Ger- 



1 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 65 

many to rise from a European to a world power. . . . 
Humanitarian dreams are imbecility. Diplomatic charity begins 
at home. Statesmanship is business. Eight and wrong are 
notions indispensable in private life. The German people are 
right because they number 87,000,000 souls. Our fathers have 
left us much to do." (0. R. Tannenberg, Gross-Deutschland: 
die Arbeit des 20ten Jahrhunderts, 1911, pp. 230-31.) 
M. <'It is our sacred duty to sharpen the sword that has been 
put into our hands and to hold it ready for defense as well as 
for offense. We must allow the idea to sink into the minds of 
our people that our armaments are an answer to the armaments 
and policy of the French. We must accustom them to think 
that an offensive war on our part is a necessity, in order to 
combat the provocations of our adversaries. We must act with 
prudence so as not to arouse suspicion and to avoid the crises 
which might injure our economic existence. We must so man- 
age matters that under the heavy weight of powerful arma- 
ments, considerable sacrifices, and strained political relations 
the precipitation of war (Losschlagen) should be considered as 
a relief, because after it would come decades of peace and 
prosperity, as after 1870." ('Memorandum of the German Gov- 
'ernment on the strengthening of the German Army, Berlin, 
Mar. 19, 1913; French Yellow Boole, Carnegie edition, 1915, I, 
p. 542.) 

"Do not let us forget the civilizing task which the decrees 
of Providence have assigned to us. Just as Prussia was des- 
tined to be the nucleus of Germany, so the regenerated Ger- 
many shall be the nucleus of a future empire of the west. And 
in order that no one shall be left in doubt, we proclaim from 
henceforth that our continental nation has a right to the sea, 
not only to the North Sea but to the Mediterranean and the 
Atlantic. Hence we intend to absorb one after another all the 
provinces which neighbor on Prussia. We will successively 
annex Denmark, Holland, Belgium, northern Switzerland, then 
Trieste and Venice, finally northern France, from the Sambre 
to the Loire. This programme we fearlessly pronounce. It ia 
not the work of a madman. The empire we intend to found 
will be no Utopia. We have ready to hand the means oi 



66 Democracy Today 

Page 

founding it and no coalition in fhe world can stop us." (Bron- 
sart von Sehellendorf, quoted by H. A. L. Fisher in The War, 
Its Causes and Issues, 1914, p. 16.) 
844. 10. In his published speeches the Kaiser never makes a down- 
right assertion of a wish to conquer other peoples. But he is 
continually ''sharpening" his ''sword," glorifying war and 
the military deeds of his ancestors, and urging his army to be 
ready for its great work. In much that he says this notion of 
aggression is implicit. The following excerpts show the dan- 
gerous drift of his mind, and that of his son and heir and of the 
ruler of the second kingdom in the Empire: 

'"The German people is of one mind with its princes and its 
Emperor in the feeling that in its powerful development it 
must set up a new boundary post and create a great fleet which 
- will correspond to its needs." (Kaiser's speech, Berlin, Feb. 
13, 1900. Christian Gauss, The German Emperor as Shown in 
His Public Utterances, 1913, p. 158.) 

"I hope it [Germany] will be granted, through the harmoni- 
ous cooperation of princes and peoples, of its armies and its 
citizens, to become in the future as closely united, as powerful, 
and as authoritative as once the Eoman world empire was, and 
that, just as in the old times they said 'Civis romanus sum,' 
hereafter, at some time in the future, they will say, 'I am a 
German citizen.' " (Kaiser's speech of Oct. 11, 1900, Chris- 
tian Gauss, p. 169.) 

' ' At the declaration of war Eussia followed France, and then 
the English also fell upon us. . . . I am glad of it, and 
I am glad because we can now have a reckoning with our ene- 
mies and because now at length ... we can get a direct 
outlet from the Khine to the sea. Ten months have gone by 
since that time. Much precious blood has been shed. It has 
not, however, been shed for nothii>g. A strengthening of the 
German Empire and an expansion outward beyond its boun- 
daries as far as this is necessary — an expansion by which we 
shall be protected against further attacks — that will be the 
gain (Frucht) of this war." (Speech by the King of Bavaria, 
June 7, 1915, at the banquet of the Bavarian Canal Association. 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 67 

*age 

Quoted by Grumbach, Das annexionistische Deutschland^ 
[Germany with Annexations], 1917, page 5.) 
**• **It is only by relying on our good German sword that we 
can tope to conquer that place in the sun which rightly belonga 
to us, and which the world does not seem willing to accord ua 
. . . till the world comes to an end, the ultimate decision, 
must rest with the sword." (Extract from the Crown Prince's 
introduction to Germany in Arms, issued in 1913.) 

''War is the noblest and holiest expression of human activ- 
ity. For us, too, the glad, great hour of battle will strike. 
Still and deep in the German heart must live the joy of battle^ 
and the longing for it. Let us ridicule to the utmost the old 
women in breeches who fear war and deplore it as cruel and 
revolting. No; war is beautiful. Its august sublimity elevates 
the human heart beyond the earthly and the common. In the 
cloud palace above sit the heroes Frederick the Great and 
Bliicher, and all the men of action — the great Emperor, Moltke,, 
Eoon, Bismarck — are there as well, but not the old women w'ho 
would take away our joy in war. When here on earth a battle 
is won by German arms and the faithful dead ascend to heaven, 
a Potsdam lance corporal will call the guard to the door, and 
*old Fritz,' springing from his golden throne, will give the 
command to present arms. That is the he'a.ven of young Ger- 
many. ' ' (Jung Deutschland, the official organ of the ' ' Young 
German League," October, 1913. Quoted by J. P. Bang, 
Hurrah and Hallelujah, 1917, p. 212.) 

This is the view of Otfried Nippold, for a time professor 
of church history at Jena. On his return from a residence of 
several years in Japan he was shocked to observe the extraor- 
dinary growth of jingoism in Germany. He gathered in most 
careful fashion a collection of statements advocating war and 
conquest, ^made in the years 1912-13 by prominent men, by well- 
known associations, and by leading newspapers. At the end of 
his book of more than a hundred pages this German scholar 
made the following careful statement of the situation: 

*'The evidence submitted in this book amounts to an irre- 
futable proof that a systematic stimulation of the war spirit is 



68 Democracy Today 

vage 

going on, based on the one hand on the wishes of the Pan- 
German League and on the other on the agitation of the 
Defense Association (Wehrverein). One cannot but feel deep 
regret in discovering that in Germany, as well as in other coun- 
tries, ill-feeling against other States and Nations is being 
stirred up so unjustifiably and that people are being so unscrup- 
ulously incited to war. . . . 
144. < ' We have come across other speakers and writers — and they 
are decidedly in the majority, so far as the passages quoted in 
these pages are concerned — who deal with the matter in a much 
more thoroughgoing way. These men do not only occasionally 
incite people to war, but they systematically inculcate a desire 
for war in the minds of the German people. In the opinion 
of these instigators, the German Nation needs a war; a long- 
continued peace seems regrettable to them just because it is a 
peace, no matter whether there is any reason for war or not, 
and therefore, in case of need, one must simply strive to bring 
it about. . . . 

"From this dogma (that war must come) it is only a step 
to the next chauvinistic principle, so dear to the heart of our 
soldier politicians who are languishing for war — the funda- 
mental principle of the aggressive or preventive war. If it be 
true that war is to come, then let it come at the moment which 
is most favorable to ourselves. In other words, do not wait until 
there is a reason for war, but strike when it is most convenient. 
, . . And, above all, as soon as possible. . . . 

"If their theory holds good, Germany, even if she conquered 
ever so many colonies, would again be in need of war after a 
few decades, since otherwise the German Nation would again 
Jbe in danger of moral degeneration. The truth is that, to 
them, war is quite a normal institution of international inter- 
course and not in any way a means of settling great interna- 
tional conflicts — not a means to be resorted to only in case of 
great necessity." (Der deutsche Chauvinismus, [Germac 
Chauvinism], 1913, pp. 113-117.) 

The powerful forces exciting the war mania were analyzed 
again and again by leading Social Democrats In the Reichstag. 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 69 

Pace 

Their views confirm the following statement made by the 
French minister of foreign affairs in his report (July 30, 
1913) : 
144. ''Some want war because, in the present circumstances, they 
think it inevitable; and, as far as Germany is concerned, the 
sooner the better. Others regard war as necessary for economic 
reasons, based on overpopulation, overproduction, and the need 
for markets and outlets, and also for social reasons. . . . 
Others, uneasy for the safety of the Empire and believing that 
time is on the side of France, think that events should be 
brought to an immediate head. . . . Others are bellicose 
from ' Bismarckism, ' as it may be termed. They feel them- 
selves humiliated at having to enter into discussions with 
France. . . . Angry disappointment is the unifying force 
of the Wehrvereine and other associations of young Germany. 
. . . Others again want war from a mystic hatred of 
revolutionary France . . . [The writer goes on to say 
that the country squires, the aristocracy, which is military in 
character, the higher bourgeoisie, the manufacturers, big mer- 
chants, and bankers are in favor of war]. The universities, 
if we except a few distinguished spirits, develop a warlike 
philosophy. . . . Historians, philosophers, political pam- 
phleteers, and other apologists of German Kultur, wish to 
impose upon the world a way of thinking and feeling specific- 
ally German. . . . We come' finally to those whose sup- 
port of the war policy is inspired by rancour and resentment. 
. . ." {French Yellow Book, Doc. No. 5. Diplomatic 
Documents, Carnegie edition, 1916, I, pp. 5151-553.) 

It will not escape the reader's attention that these three 
statements from widely differing sources were made from one 
to three years before Germany plunged the world into the war 
she wanted. 

As late as the end of 1917 the rulers of Germany could 
not abandon their schemes for annexation. The Reichstag, 
impelled probably by the growing peril of Germany's sit- 
uation, voted against annexations and indemnities. Alarmed 
by this vote, the Pan-Germans began a campaign of 
mass meetings and telegrams. They sent a message to 



70 Democracy Today 

Page 

chancellor Michaelis, urging that peace without indemnities 
and extensions of territory was impossible. To this the chan- 
cellor answered: '*! am firmly confident that the splendid 
military situation will help us to a peace which will guarantee 
permanently the German Empire's condition of existence {sic) 
on the Continent and overseas." {New York Times, Aug. 10, 
1917.) Michaelis 's phrases were those commonly used by the 
Germans who wish extension of territory, but who express their 
■wishes agreeably. He was indicating in a polite and guarded 
way that the Pan-Germans should understand that their plans 
of conquest had not been given up. 
'44- 11. In Eoumania the house of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen ; in 
Bulgaria the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha; in Albania the 
inglorious house of "Wied. What the late Queen of Greece, 
the Kaiser's sister, accomplished for the German cause is suffi- 
ciently known. In Montenegro the heir apparent was married 
to a German princess. Only the Serbian royal house is without 
German connections. 

12. Not long after the treaty of Berlin (1878) German offi- 
cers, one of whom was General von der Goltz, set about reorgan- 
izing the Turkish Army. In 1888 German financiers, depending 
upon the Deutsche Bank, asked for a railway concession. In 
the next year the Kaiser, "William II, visited Abdul Hamid. 
By 1891 German influence at Constantinople became evident. 
Germans in Turkey were directing the building of railways and 
Germans at home were urging the necessity of German rail- 
ways to the Persian Gulf. In 1898 the Kaiser went to Con- 
stantinople and on to Palestine, where he declared himself the 
friend of 300,000,000 Moslems. In 1899 Dr. Siemens, a Berlin 
capitalist, signed the Bagdad Railway convention with Turkey. 
Although capitalists of other nations were allowed to share in 
financing the road, German interests maintained control over 
it. After that time German officers began going to Turkey 
in numbers, drilling the Turkish troops, teaching them modern 
warfare, equipping the army with the best new artillery, and 
thoroughly fortifying strategic points. Meanwhile German 
diplomats were studiously indifferent to Armenian atrocities 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 71 

Page 

perpetrated by the Turks. When the Young Turk movement 
culminated in the revolution of 1908 the Kaiser's government 
was quick to show favor to the new government. German 
oflacers assisted the Turks in their two Balkan wars, 1912-13. 
These differ^it moves have all been part of a general plan. 
For two decades German policy had sought to create in Turkey 
a strong but subordinated military ally and to bring her within 
the German economic system. Eich territories in Asia Minor 
and the Mesopotamian valley might thus be developed, an all- 
German route to the East assured, and Britain's routes to India 
and her position in Egypt brought within striking distance. 
•44. 13. See the French Yellow Boole {Diplomatic Documents, Car- 
negie edition), for a secret German document bearing date of 
March 19, 1913, obtained from a reliable source and commu- 
nicated to M. Jonnart, minister for foreign affairs, by M. 
Etienne, minister of war, April 2, 1913. The German writer 
discusses plans for increase of armament, and for war, partic- 
ularly against France (pp. 542-3) : "We must not be anxious 
about the fate of our colonies. The final result in Europe will 
settle their position. On the other hand, we must stir up 
trouble in the north of Africa and in Kussia. It is a means 
of keeping the forces of the enemy engaged. It is, therefore, 
absolutely necessary that we should open up relations, by means 
of well-chosen agents, with influential people in Egypt, Tunis, 
Algeria, and Morocco, in order to prepare the measures which 
would be necessary in the case of a European war. Of course, 
in case of war we would openly recognize these secret allies, 
and on the conclusion of peace we would secure to them the 
advantages which they had gained. These aims are capable of 
realization. The first attempt, which was made some years ago, 
opened up for us the desired relations. Unfortunately these 
relations were not sufficiently consolidated. Eisings provoked 
In time of war by political agents need to be carefully pre- 
pared and by material means. They must break out simultane- 
ously with the destruction of the means of communication; 
they must have a controlling head to be found among the influ- 
ential leaders, religious or political. The Egyptian school la 



72 Democracy Today 

particularly suited to this purpose; more and more it serves afl 
a bond between the intellectuals of the Mohammedan world." 
l«- For the detailed story of the activity in Egypt after this 
and before see Times (London), History of the War, III 
(1917), pp. 292-295. Von Bernstorff was then consular agent, 
and after him Prince von Hatzfeldt, and they conducted them- 
selves somewhat as both did later in America. 

On July 7, 1917, indictments were brought in the Federal 
court at San Fra-ncisco against 98 persons, including German 
consuls and consuls general. At the same time the following 
Statement was made by the Federal district attorney, Mr. John 
W. Preston: 

* ' For more than a year prior to the outbreak of the European 
Tvar certain Hindus in San Francisco and certain Germans were 
preparing openly for war with England. At the outbreak of 
the war Hindu leaders, members of the German consulate here 
and attaches of the German Government, began to form plans 
to foment revolution in India for the purpose of freeing India 
and aiding Germans in their military operations. 

"Hindus on the Pacific coast were canvassed and those will- 
ing to take j^art in the revolution were registered. Emissaries 
I'^ere financed by the German agents here and immediately dis- 
patched to Germany. Shortly thereafter what is known as th» 
India committee, an adjunct of the German foreign office, waa 
created in Berlin. This India committee had the personal atten- 
tion of Alfred Zimmermann, German Secretary of Foreign 
Affairs. 

"Thereafter the operations of the plotters in the United 
States were directed from Berlin. The conspiracy took the 
form of various military enterprises. Arms and ammunition in 
large quantities were purchased with German money. Men were 
recruited and sent to India." 
•45- 14. On June 28, 1914, there took place at Serajevo, Bosnia 
(Austrian territory since 1909), the assassination of Archduke 
Ferdinand and nis wife. Serbians undoubtedly aided and 
abetted the criminals. The Austrian Government asserted that 
it traced the source of the deed to Serbian territory, and even 



Biographical and ilxplanatory Notes 73 



'age 



it maintained, to government and court circles in Belgrade, the 
Serbian capital. 

145. For nearly a month nothing occurred. Then, on July 23, 
almost without warning, Austria-Hungary made known her 
demands upon Serbia. Their main purpose seemed to be the 
complete extirpation of the Pan-Serbian movement and the pun- 
ishment of all Serbians implicated in the crime at Serajevo. 
The demands involved a practical denial of the sovereignty of 
Serbia. A reply was, furthermore, demanded by 6 o'clock on 
July 25, or within exactly 48 hours. 

Serbia made a reply covering every point in t^^e demands. 
It yielded to most of the demands and showed an extremely 
conciliatory spirit. On the question of allowing Austrian offi- 
cers to enter Serbian territory in order to take part in the 
inquiries or judicial proceedings concerning the Serajevo mur- 
ders, the Serbian Government declared that it would "admit 
such collaboration as agrees with the principle of international 
law, with criminal procedure, and with good neighborly rela- 
tions." It added finally that if the Austro-Hungarian Gov- 
ernment were ''not satisfied with this reply, the Serbian Gov- 
ernment, considering that it is not to the common interest to 
take precipitate action in the solution of this question, is 
ready, as always, to accept a pacific understanding, either by 
referring this question to the decision of the international 
tribunal at The Hague, or to the Great Powers which took 
part in the drawing up of the declaration made by the Serbian 
Government on the 18/31 of March, 1909." 

A number of the Powers pleaded the Serbian cause, asking 
at least an extension of the time limit or a delay in making 
war, but the Austrian Government would abate not a jot or 
tittle of its demands. Its unyielding attitude and brusqueness 
startled the world, and have justified the suspicion that Austria- 
Hungary did not desire a satisfactory reply. 

As if to lend color to this suspicion it has since come to light 
that in August, 1913, Austria-Hungary had already formed the 
plan to attack Serbia. Italy, though at that time in alliance 
with Germany and Austria-Hungary, refused to support such 



74 Democracy Today 

Page 

an aggression, (Declaration of Signor Giolitti to the Italian 
Parliament, Dee. 5, 1914.) 

•45. 15. Across the path of this railway to Bagdad lay Serbia — 
an independent country whose sovereign alone among those of 
southeastern Europe had no marriage connection with Berlin, a 
Serbia that looked toward Eussia. That is why Europe was 
nearly driven into war in 1913; that is why Germany stood 
so determinedly behind Austria 's demands in 1914 and forced 
war. She must have her ''corridor" to the southeast; she 
must have political domination all along the route of the great 
economic empire she planned. She was unwilling to await the 
process of "peaceful penetration." 

16. ''We must create a central Europe which will guarantee 
the peace of the entire continent from the moment when it shall 
have driven the Eussians from the Black Sea and the Slavs 
from the south, and shall have conquered large tracts to the 
east of our frontiers for German colonization. We can not let 
loose ex dbrupto the war which w^ill create this central Europe. 
All we can do is to accustom our people to the thought that 
this war must come." (Quoted by Ch. Andler, pp. 21, 22, 
from Paul de Lagarde, Deutsche Schriften, 4th ed., 1903, 
p. 83.) 

The projected Middle Europe would, through its hold on 
Constantinople, close the chief outlet for the exports of the 
Eussian Eepublic. It would, through the erection of a king- 
dom of Poland, united to Middle Europe, take away from 
Eussia almost its entire manufacturing area. Such an Empire 
would do little less than bring the Eussian Eepublic into 
economic dependence upon the Teutonic Powers. And this eco- 
nomic dependence could be used as a club to bring political 
dependence as well. The results of" this for the future of 
Eussia are easy to see. 

17. "And over all these; over the Germans, French, Danes, 
and Poles in the German Empire; over the Magyars, Ger- 
mans, Eoumanians, Slovaks, Croats, and Serbs in Hungary; 
over the Germans, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, and southern Slavs 
in Austria, let us imagine once again the controlling concept 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 75 

Page 

of Mid-Europe. Mid-Europe will have a German nucleus, will 
voluntarily use the German language, which is known all over 
the world and is already the language of intercourse within 
Central Europe, but must from the outset display toleration 
and flexibility in regard to all the neighboring languages that 
are associated with it." (F. Naumann, Central Europe, 1916, 
pp. 108-109.) 
•45. 18, The German government of Alsace-Lorraine was typical 
of what could have been expected if Germany had annexed more 
territory as a result of this war. Belgium, Luxemburg, and Rus- 
sian Poland had no more wish to be forcibly joined to Germany 
today than had Alsace-Lorraine in 1870; and if they had suf- 
fered that fate nothing but force would have kept them in sub- 
mission. In the more than forty years since its annexation Dy 
Germany, Alsace-Lorraine has been largely Germanized, yet in 
1914 it was still bitterly opposed to a Prussianized Government. 
Until their liberation, the xA.lsatians looked more than ever 
toward France. In 1911 public demonstrations against the Prus- 
sian rule became more pronounced and continued intermittently 
down to the beginning of the war in 1914. In 1912 the Emperor 
threatened the discontented Alsatians with complete suppres- 
sion of their constitution unless they ceased their agitations. 
At the same time noticeable increases were made in the gar- 
risons of the leading cities, and work upon the fortificationa 
was rushed. In 1913 occurred the historic Zabern incident 
which showed the complete dominance of the military power 
over civilian government and rights. '* Lieutenant von Forst- 
ner, of the garrison, one day remarked in the street that he 
would give ten marks to any soldier who would run his bayonet 
through an Alsatian blackguard. In spite of popular indigna- 
tion he was upheld by his superiors, . . . but he was 
afraid to appear in the streets without a corporal 's guard. He 
still further earned the hatred of the town by striking with his 
sword a lame shoemaker who had laughed at him." Among 
the unmilitaristic classes in Germany there was great indigna- 
tion; but in the Reichstag, the ministry, by order of the Em- 
peror, upheld the army, without compromise or apology. 



76 Democracy Today 

Page 

Prussian Poland and North Schleswig fared little if any bet- 
ter. The three and a half million Poles in Prussia had been 
subjected to more severe persecutions than their compatriots 
in autocratic Russia. They had, of course, been deprived 
of their own laM^s since 1815. More recently, their religious 
liberty had been restricted, and the Polish language for- 
bidden in education, in public business, and (with certain 
temporary exceptions) in public meetings, though the great 
majority of the Polish people understand no other language. 
As a supreme effort at assimilation the Prussian Government 
tried, partly by vast expenditure of money and partly by 
force, to compel the Poles to sell their lands and to introduce 
German colonists to take their places. This interference with 
the Polish laws, religion, language, and property was not 
provoked in the first instance by disloyalty, though the Poles 
became disloyal in consequence of it. Nor were the 150,000 
Danes in North Schleswig saved by their inoffensive obscurity, 
their Lutheran religion, or even their Teutonic blood, from 
similar persecutions, with similar results. If Belgium had 
been forced to remain in German hands she would have become 
another Schleswig, another Poland. 

In Austria-Hungary the situation was even worse. The South 
Slavs and the Roumanians in Hungary were deprived of 
the right to vote (although guaranteed to them in 1S67) ; 
their educational institutions were hampered or closed, their 
economic development interfered with. And this was the 
work of the Hungarian Government which had Germany's 
warmest approval in all such measures. 
'46, 19. The German cruisers, the Goeben and Breslau, took refuge 
in the Dardanelles at the outbreak of the war. Instead of 
interning these fugitive ships in accordance with international 
law, the Turkish Government, already under German influence, 
pretended to buy them. In this manner the German Govern- 
ment became master of the situation and Turkey lost what- 
ever independence it may still have had; for the German 
admiral and crews remained on board and a German element 
was introduced into the remainder of the Turkish fleet. It 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 77 

age 
was this Turco-German fleet, under effective German control, 
that forced Turkey's reluctant entrance into the war. By- 
order of the German admiral, it bombarded Russian Black 
Sea ports, without provocation, without warning, without pre- 
vious authorization of the Ottoman Government, and contrary 
to the desires of a majority of its members. {Diplomatic Docu- 
ments, Carnegie edition, part ii. pp. 1057-1205 and 1385-1437.) 
20. The Imperial Government continued to maneuver for 
peace, a peace to be arranged in conference at a "green table," 
with Germany holding as trumps the overrun territories still 
in her possession, and not for a peace guaranteed "by the 
major force of mankind." When the Reichstag voted for 
peace without annexations, the chancellor, Michaelis, spoke 
vaguely at first, but then hastened to reassure the 
alarmed Pan-Germans. When the Pope's proposals were 
brought forward, he welcomed them, but remained hope- 
lessly indefinite as to whether Germany would assent to the 
details. 

*7. 21. The rapid industrial development of Germany after the 
war of 1870, though due to economic causes, greatly enhanced 
the prestige of the military classes, who assumed the credit 
for it. Their position during the war was highly advan- 
tageous to them from an economic point of view, for they 
controlled the chief centers of European industry outside Great 
Britain. They held the greater part of Belgium, one of the 
most highly developed industrial centers of the world. They 
were exploiting the chief mining and manufacturing part of 
France, the oil and wheat fields of Roumania, and one of the 
few important manufacturing districts of Russia. They had 
secured the Balkan corridor to the Near East, with its bound- 
less possibilities of commercial exploitation and of further 

I political aggression in the direction of Egypt and India. If 
they had retained these conquests they would have been perma- 
nently enriched at the expense of their impoverished neighbors. 
If they could have capitalized their advantageous positions on 

j the war map, whether by annexations or otherwise, the late war 

I also, like that of 1870, would have appeared in the light of a 



78 Democracy Today 

I'age 

profitable business adventure. War itself would indeed have 
become one of the greatest of national industries, with the mili- 
tary caste necessarily in supreme political control. In such 
an atmosphere democracy cannot develop. Nor can the 
triumph of democracy be expected in Germany till the prestige 
of the military caste has been destroyed. The celebrated Prof. 
Hans Delbriick, of the University of Berlin, wrote early iu 
1914: ''Anyone who has any familiarity at all with our officers 
and generals knows that it would take another Sedan, inflicted 
on us instead of by us, before they would acquiesce in the con- 
trol of the army by the German Parliament." 

'48. 22. America no longer occupies a position of charmed isola- 
tion. In the late war, navies transported great armies thou- 
sands of miles. The wireless kept Germany informed almost 
constantly of developments in the United States. German sub- 
marines appeared in our ports and sank ships off our coasts. 
If disaster had come to the British and American navies the 
war might have been brought within our borders. 

During the war more than ever before we faced the problem 
of defending with a real force or with adequate guaranties our 
traditional policy — the Monroe doctrine. The facilities of the 
entire Holy Alliance in 1823 for the violation of American 
territory were small as compared with the power of Germany 
alone. If Germany had emerged from the war victorious 
and unreformed, then we, like France, Holland, Belgium, and 
Switzerland during the past decades, would have had to pre- 
pare indeed for self-defense. It would have been necessary for 
us to shoulder a burden of military preparedness in time of 
peace such as America has never known. 

23. See note 20. 

24. The terrifying bitterness of the struggle between the 
Imperial Government and the Social Democratic Party came 
to light in a speech by the Kaiser to the army recruits in 
1891, in which he referred to his political opponents as "the 
internal foe," and said: ". . .It may come to pass 
that you will have to shoot down and stab your own relations 
and brothers." Upon another occasion lie said: ". 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 79 



age 



To me every Social Democrat is synonymous with an enemy 
of the realm and of the Fatherland." 

At the outbreak of the war the Socialists abandoned their 
opposition to the Government and the Kaiser announced that 
there were no longer any parties in Germany. ' ' In time of 
peace this or that party has attacked me; I forgive them now 
with all my heart." Nevertheless some Socialists who sub 
sequently adopted an independent tone were placed in jail. The 
majority seemed content to be the cat's-paw of the military 
authorities in working upon the Eussian Socialists for a sepa- 
rate peace. The hollown >ss of the reconciliation and the Gov- 
ernment 's insincerity in permitting thp use of Socialist peace 
formulas (see note 20) may be infej "ed from a passage in 
Chancellor von Bethmann-.Iollweg's sp 3ch of July 7, 1917, in 
which he is reported to iaave said th; •; it was impossible to 
accept the socialist propositions in be] ilf of peace ''because 
they had proved unsuccessful in Eussi.-i " 

Franklin Knight Lane 1864- — ) 
Franklin Knight Lane, born 1864 in 1 rince Edward's Island, 
Canada, removed in childhood to Calif oi lia, where he was edu- 
cated at the State University. After a successful career in the 
law he entered politics and became later a member of the Inter- 
state Commerce Commission, until appointed Secretary of the 
Interior by President Wilson. 

Why We Are at War 

57. 1, See Flag Day Address, Note 4. 

158. 2. In the Eevolution and the War of 1812. 

160. 3. At the beginning of the ruthless submarine war by Ger- 
many von Bethmann-Hollweg explained that the reason it had 
not been entered upon earlier was because Germany was not 
ready. In other words, the promise to respect international 
law in this matter made by Germany at the time of the Sussex 
■case was merely a dishonest piece of temporizing. 

4. The Treaty guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium, so 
called by von Bethmann-Hollweg in a speech in the Eeichstag 
at the opening of the war in 1914. 



80 Democracy Today 

Pftge 

5. For the Zimmermann Note, see War Message, Note 22. 

6. In tihe feudal system there was no such thing as political 
equality. The vassal was bound by fealty to his lord and 
forced to render certain dues including war-service. The lord 
did as he willed, the vassal had to serve him and obey. 

161. 7. This is the German adaptation of the political maxim of 
absolutism, ''The King can do no wrong." The Emperor 
who told his people that he ruled by divine right alone and 
not by the will and sanction of his people and parliament, 
still acted on this principle of irresponsibility. 

8. On the departure of the German troops for China in July, 
1900, the Emperor addressed them as follows: 

**If you come to gr^ps with him (the enemy) be assured 
quarter will not be gi en, no prisoners will be taken. Ufle 
your weapons in such i way that for a thousand years no 
Chinese shall dare to lo k upon a German askance. Show your 
manliness. . . . Op m the way for Kultur once for all!" 

Eld-u Eoot (1845- — ) 

Elihu Eoot, born 18 t'5 in New York State, and graduated 
from Hamilton College in 1864, rose rapidly to recognition as 
one of the greatest legal minds of his day and one of the fore- 
most interpreters of our Constitution. He filled with distin- 
guished ability the posts of Secretary of War under President 
McKinley and Secretary of State under Roosevelt. In 1917 
he was chosen by President Wilson as Head of the American 
Mission to Russia. 

The Duties of the Citizen 

•M. 1. See the Preamble to the Constitution, Appendix. Indeed, 
it will be well for the reader to read through the Constitution 
in connection with this address, made by one of its greatest 
interpreters. 

2. Constitution, Article I, Section 8. 

3. Constitution, Article II, Section 2. 

165. 4, The Senate voted 82 to 6 for war and the House of Repre- 
sentatives, 373 to 50, 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 81 

!• 5. This philosophy of the Notrecht, "Necessity knows no 
law, ' ' as Bethmann-Hollweg put it, had been expounded with 
favor by many of the leading German authorities on Inter- 
national Law. (See International Law Imperilled, by Prof. E. 
S. Corwin, in the World Peril, Princeton University Press, 
1917.) 

2. 6. The Tartar conqueror, 1162-1227. 

*■ 7. Frederick of Hohenzollern came into possession of Bran 
denburg by very questionable methods in 1411, but the rea\ 
power of the house in Europe dates back only to the time of 
the Great Elector who ruled from 1640 to 1688. In the latter 
year the population of Prussia was 1,500,000. 

8. Frederick the Great, whose principles were given by Mr 
Eoot in the quotation on page 172. Born 1712, he ruled from 
1740 to 1786 and laid the foundations both of Germany *s 
later power and her later international morality. 

6. 9. This characteristically imperialistic pronouncement was 
made by the German Kaiser to an Englishman who reported 
it to the English statesman, Joseph Chamberlain: ''If I had 
had a larger fleet I would have taken Uncle Sam by the scruff 
of the neck." Probably the statement was not made at the 
time of the Venezuelan Dispute; in any case, the Emperor waa 
referring to the time of our war with Spain in 1898. (See 
The Life and Letters of JoJin Hay by William Roseoe Thayer, 
Boston, 1915. Vol. II., Page 279.) 

The Emperor's conduct in the Venezuelan Dispute was 
none the less interesting. In 1902 Venezuela owed Ger- 
many, England, and Italy considerable sums, which she was 
either unwilling or unable to pay. Germany and England 
broke off relations with her and established a "pacific block- 
ade" of Venezuelan ports. John Hay, our Secretary of State, 
protested and England and Italy came to an understanding. 
Germany refused. She stated that if she took possession of 
territory, such possession would be ' ' temporary, ' ' Such a threat 
of occupation of South American territory was a serious chal- 
lenge to the iMonroe Doctrine and President Roosevelt took 
up the challenge. He told Dr. Holleben, the German Ambassa- 



82 Democracy Today 

Page 

dor, that unless Gerjiiany consented to arbitrate, Dewey's 
American squadron Avould in ten days be given orders to pro- 
ceed to the coast of Venezuela and prevent any occupation. 
Roosevelt refused to argue the question. When a week later, 
Holleben called upon the President, Roosevelt inquired as he 
was leaving about Venezuela. When Holleben said he had 
received no word, Roosevelt said he would send Dewey one 
day sooner unless the Emperor agreed to arbitrate, within 
forty-eight hours. The Emperor agreed to do so the next day. 
(See Life and Letters of Bay, Vol. II, pp. 288-289.) 

'78. 10. In the Hague Peace Conference^ at which the United 
State was represented, the rights and status of neutrals were 
defined. 

W^HAT Democracy Means 

'84. 1. German industries are organized into combinations called 
"Cartels" which have some of the characteristics both of our 
pools and trusts. The government consistently favoreid these 
Cartels in their efforts at home and also in their efforts to 
capture the foreign markets with subsidies direct or indirect. 
In many cases they were given especially low transpoi'tation 
rates over government owned or controlled railroad or steam- 
ship lines to foreign points, to enable them to get their goods 
there more cheaply than their competitors, the government 
accepting the loss in transportation charges. Tliis led to the 
policy of "dumping" goods at points outside of Germany. This 
process of "dumping" goods in the United States and selling 
them cheaper in one section than another is forbidden by our 
anti-trust legislation. It was the basis of many indictments 
against the now discredited methods of the Standard Oil Com- 
pany of former years. In fact, the German government acted 
like a gigantic trust and inaugurated a policy of "Cut-throat" 
international competition. Plans for economic domination after 
the war received much attention in Germany during the conflict. 
As Germany surmised that her traveling salesmen would not 
be welcome in Russia for some years after the war, it was re- 
ported on good authority that Russian prisoners were utilized 
to teach Russian to thousands of young women who were to act 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 83 

as agents for German companies after peace was declared. The 
German government in 1917 voted a large sum to German ship 
owners on condition that they build ships. Since the cost of 
construction was greater then than in peace times, the govern- 
ment agreed to give as rebate to the builders from fifty to 
seventy percent of this added cost. 

• 2. Berlin to Bagdad railway. See Note 15^ Flag Day Speech. 

• 3. The Pan-German movement was a force in German pol- 
itics, for at least two decades. It insisted upon a greater army 
and navy, and a policy of colonization and expansion directed 
toward world domination. It began to find its reflection in 
the speeches of Wilhelm II about 1896. 

The designs of this very important party in Germany 'are 
best illustrated in the speeches of von Tirpitz, who loudly 
insisted upon annexation and indemnities for Germany both 
from the East and the West. They of course planned to retain 
Belgium. 

^ 4. Colonel E. M. House was head of the American Gom- 
mission which arrived in London early in November, 1917, to 
take part in the Allied War Council to be held in Paris in 
that month. The Commission included Admiral Benson, Chief 
of Naval Operations, and General Bliss, Chief of War Opera- 
tions, as well as representatives of the various war boards. 
In announcing the arrival ot the Commission in London, Sec- 
retary of State Lansing was careful to emphasize that the 
Paris conference was primarily a war conference to bring 
about more effective cooperation of the Allies against the 
Central Powers. 
'• 5. In the autumn of 1917 a number of persons in various 
parts of the country were seized by mobs and submitted to pun- 
ishment and indignities for supposed or real pacifist or Pro- 
German sentiments. The most striking case was probably that 
of the Rev. Herbert Bigelow who was severely maltreated and 
beaten in the neighborhood of Cincinnati by a body of masked 
men. 

6. President Wilson doubtless had in mind groups like the 
Industrial Workers of the World, who in 1917 caused dis- 
turbances in various labor centers. 



84 Democracy Today 

In the notes to the Secotid War Message and Program of the 
World's Peace very liberal use has been made of the excellent mate- 
rial recently made available by the Committee on Public Informa- 
tion. The editor has drawn especially upon the information pro- 
vided in the "War Cyclopedia/' edited by Professors Frederick D. 
Paxson, Edward S. Corwin, and Samuel B. Harding; in ''Oerman 
War Practices, Parts I. and II.," by Professor Dana C. Munro, and 
in "Conquest and Kultur," by Professors Wallace Notestein and 
Elmer E. Stoll. 

Second War Message 

Page 

'95 1. Cf. Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5. 

k96 2. The aims and spirit of the more influential leaders in 
Germany in 1917 are shown in characteristic extracts like the 
following from the Deutsche Tageszeitung : 

* * Not courts of arbitration and paper treaties, but only an 
increase of power which will make us unconquerable in every 
direction can be the reward for these endless sacrifices." 

'9' 3. The formula *^ no annexations, no indemnities " was used 
by Philip Scheidemann, one of the leaders of the German Social 
Democrats, and Matthias Erzberger of the Center Party. A 
resolution was passed by the Eeichstag on July 9, 1917, which 
seemed to favor their idea, but any hope that might have been 
entertained from it was negatived by the *' rider " that '' the 
German people . . . will fight until the rights of Germany 
and its allies to life and development are secured." 

This resolution was passed in all probability as a concession 
to the German liberal parties for the purpose of influencing 
the impending Stockholm Conference which had been manipu- 
lated before its meetings were to begin, so that the pro-Germans 
counted on controlling 155 out of 202 prospective delegates. It 
was also made use of, as Trotzky declared, to deceive the Bol- 
sheviki delegates at Brest-Litovsk. In spite of this statement 
of principles the Germans refused to evacuate Poland, Lithuania, 
Courland, and Esthonia and held that these powerless provinces 
occupied by German armies had already declared for Germany. 
The German government was openly and justly accused of 
double-dealing by the Bolsheviki delegates. 

That the Chancellors Michaelis and von Hertling and their 
masters never intended to act honestly on this principle of * ^ no 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 85 



:e 



annexations and no indemnities" is evident from Michaelis's 
statement quoted at the close of Note 10 to the Flag Day 
Address. 

4. The Belgian Government in 1917 issued a map show- 
ing the location of 43,000 estates destroyed by German orders. 
" By 66 separate decrees in less than two years the Germans 
seized many thousands of machines, countless machine tools, 
lathes, oils and fats, chemical and mineral products, wool, linen, 
jute, cotton, thread of all kinds, rubber, automobiles, locomo- 
tives, motors, horses and other animals, hides, and many other 
products, completely stripping Belgium." The ultimate purpose 
of tliese seizures is disclosed in a speech of Herr Beumer in 
the Prussian Diet February, 1917: "Anybody who knows 
the present state of things in Belgian industry will agree with 
me that it must take at least some years — assuming that Bel- 
gium is independent at all — before Belgium can even think 
of competing with us in the world market. And anybody who 
has traveled, as I have done, through the occupied districts of 
France will agree with me that so much damage has been done 
to industrial property that no one need be a prophet in order 
to say that it will take more than 10 years before we need think 
of France as a competitor or of the reestablishment of French 
industry." ( War Cyclopedia, article " Belgium, Economic De- 
struction.") On reading the list of the articles requisitioned 
in Belgium by the German authorities it is difficult to see how 
the inhabitants of territory occupied by Germans could live on 
what had been left them. 

5. This was part of the German plan of creating " Middle 
Europe." (Cf. Flag Day Address, pp. 144-146 and Notes 16 
and 17 to that address; also Note 1 to Program of the World's 
Peace. ) 

•• 6. The German army (February 1918) occupied about 12,500 
square miles of French territory. How this was ruined and 

! for what purpose is evident from Note 4 above. 

iJ- 7. According to the German Constitution the Emperor had 
the power to declare war when the war was defensive. The deci- 

[ sion as to the character of any particular war was left with him. 



S6 Democracy Today 

Page 

At the beginning of the late war he announced, August 6, 
1914, "The enemy surprises us while we are entirely at peace. 
Therefore, to arms!" This fiction he attempted to maintain 
in spite of the palpable contradictions in Germany's attitude 
before the declaration of war and after. In 1917 a deputy 
in the Reichstag declared that a conference had been held at 
Potsdam on July 5, 1914, between Austrian and German digni- 
taries, who after considering the consequences determined to 
use the murder of the* Archduke Ferdinand as a pretext to 
crush Serbia. (Cf. Flag Day Address, Note 14.) The German 
ambassador at Constantinople who had attended the conference 
reported it to the Italian ambassador at Constantinople and to 
Mr. Morgenthau, the American ambassador. An account of 
what happened is given in the letters of Dr. Muehlon, a former 
director of Krupp's. 

The attitude of a goodly portion of the dominant party in 
Germany was forcibly expressed by Karl A. Kuhn in Die 
Wahren Ursachcn des Kriegs (The True Causes of the War), 
1914, " Must Kultur rear its domes over mountains of corpses, 
oceans of tears, and the death rattle of the conquered? Yes, it 
must . . . The might of the conqueror is the highest law be- 
fore which the conquered must bow." See also Notes 15 and 
17, to Wilson's War Message. 
201. 8. It is impossible to catalogue at all briefly the wrongs com- 
mitted by Germany in this war. Two pamphlets issued by the 
government, German War Practices, Parts I and II, deal in 
detail only with wrongs committed on the Western Front. 
Some of the wrongs committed by Germany against the United 
States are mentioned in Wilson's War Message and Flag Day 
Address and their notes. 

9. The Congress of Vienna, 1814-15, was called to rearrange 
the states of Europe after the fall of Napoleon. The repre- 
sentatives of the " great powers " or rather of the powerful 
rulers of Europe decided the questions before them in accord- 
ance only with dynastic aims and ambitions. The will of the 
inhabitants of any province, as well as the principle of nation- 
ality, was entirely disregarded. It was largely a series of trades 
of territory and compromises between jealous rulers, and it was 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 87 

age 
opposed in spirit to the spread of democracy. The seeds of 
many of the wars in the nineteentli century were sown by this 
Congress and it is responsible for the sufferings of many of the 
oj^pressed nationalities. 

'2. 10. Cf. War Message, Note 15. 

11. In reply to President Wilson's request of Dec. 18, 1916, 
the Allied Governments stated their terms of peace (Jan. 10, 
1917) in general proposals which afforded a basis for negotia- 
tions: the Central Powers gave no statement of terms. (Cf. A 
World League for Peace, p. 102.) After Kerensky became head 
of the Russian government, July 20, 1917, he repeatedly urged 
the Allies to make a, fuller and more definite statement. The 
present statement of President Wilson was followed early in 
January, 1918, by one from Lloyd George and on January 8 
by another to the same end by President Wilson. (Cf. Program 
of the World's Peace, pp. 209-218.) 

12. In the meantime German propaganda had been carried 
on in Russia most diligently. A trustworthy report from 
Washington announced that $8,000,000 had been spent by Ger- 
many for this purpose. That the German government was 
actuated by no sympathy for Russia and proceeded for purely 
selfish reasons is plain from the fact that Trotzky himself 
accused them of double dealing. (Cf. Note 3 above.) 

'3. 13. Cf. A World League for Peace, p. 109. 

14. At this time we had not declared war on Austria, Bul- 
garia, or Turkey. 

15, Congress declared war on Austria-Hungary on Dec. 7, 
1917. 

54- 16. The Austrian army was brought largely under the control 
of Germany after its disastrous defeat by the Russians in 1915, 
after which it was stiffened by Prussian troops and officers. 
Germany's loans to Austria brought the latter still further 
under Prussian domination. The easy-going Austrian has 
nevertheless always detested the over-weening Prussian. 

05. 17. Paragraphs 4607 ff of the Revised Statutes deal with 
the restrictions placed upon enemy aliens. Among other things 
they are forbidden to have arms or explosives in their posses- 
sion, to approach arsenals, forts, munition works, etc., to publisii 



88 Democracy Today 

Page 

attacks on the government or its members, to abet hostile acts 
against the United States, or give its enemies information or 
aid and comfort. 

18. The causes of the alarming rise in prices have been sum- 
marized as due to (1) increased foreign demand, (2) domestic 
hoarding, (3) speculation, (4) cooperation of sellers to push 
prices. Each rise in food prices was used as an excuse for 
a rise in the price of other commodities. The result was a 
scale of prices which worked hardship to the masses of the 
people and called for government intervention, for even in time 
of peace, businesses " affected with a public interest " are sub- 
ject to regulation as to prices. 

206. 19. This project has not yet received its final form. 

20. Although this recommendation was not immediately car- 
ried out, the government fixed prices of commodities like steel 
and copper, and Mr. Stet'tinius was appointed purchasing agent. 

21. On Dec. 26, President Wilson issued a proclamation stat- 
ing that at noon of Dec. 28 the government would take over the 
railroads and that W. G. McAdoo had been appointed director- 
general. 

207. 22. For a list of Germany's violations of international law and 
the laws of humanity see German War Practices published by 
the Committee on Public Information. These German outrages 
were the more distressing as they were not the acts of isolated - 
individuals but the results of a deliberately ordered policy of 
inhumanity and terrorism. (Cf. also War Message, Note 24.) 

23. Cf. the Zimmermann note. War Message, Note 22. 

Program of the World's Peace 
209. 1 In 1917 "Mittel-Europa" was an accomplished fact, mili- 
tarily speaking. If Germany had not been defeated she would 
have emerged from the war the political and economic master of 
the territory stretching from Hamburg to Mesopotamia. To 
preserve these conquests was the object of her intrigues for 
peace. Germany had Montenegro, Albania, Serbia, most of 
Roumania, 161,556 square miles of Russia, nearly all of Bel- 
gium, 12,427 square miles of France, making 310,685 square 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 89 

ige 
miles of conquered territory. In this territory she had "sci- 
entifically enslaved" 42,000,000 human beings, a large number 
of whom were forced to labor for her. She had seized the war 
material and the railroads; she had seized and taken away 
animals, grains, potatoes, sugar, alcohol, metals of many kinds, 
oils, textile fabrics, motors, machinery, rolling mills, electrical 
engines, looms, etc. She had helped herself to the personal 
property of the inhabitants — tapestries, rugs, pictures, jewels, 
securities, etc. By her system of loans to her allies she had 
brought Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey absolutely 
under her control. These countries owe Germany not only the 
money advanced to them but enormous sums for war material 
as yet unpaid for. This control meant that she would have a 
monopoly in exploiting the great resources of the Balkan States 
and Asia Minor. Further, her position in Middle Europe and 
Constantinople would force the economic subordination of 
Russia, whose resources she would exploit. 

' ' Germany has really wrung from the war present and future 
j)rofits which can be computed only in hundreds of 'billions of 
francs. This war therefore has brought Germany boundless 
material gain such as no war in history has ever brought to one 
people. 

' ' German victory and the fruition of her most important war 
advantages depend directly on the maintenance of Central Pan- 
Germany, made up of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Serbia, Bul- 
garia, and Turkey. Now, this maintenance is based on two 
prime conditions: (1) The continuance of Serbia's state of 
subjection to Austria-Hungary. (2) The preservation of the 
new economic and military lines of communication between 
Berlin on the one side and Vienna, Budapest, Sofia, and Con- 
stantinople on the other . . . Finally, if the present order of 
things is preserved, Germany can maintain the Hamburg-Bagdad 
line. This would be assured by the adoption of the formula 
'peace without indemnities and annexations.' " (Cheradame, 
in Atlantic Monthly, November, 1917.) 

Reread also Flag Bay Address, pp. 144-149. 

2. On Dec. 15, 1917, an armistice was signed between Ger- 



90 Democracy Today 



Page 

many and the Bolsheviki Government at Brest-Litovsk and '] 
peace negotiations were begun on Dec. 23. Tliese were broken j 
off for tlie reasons given in Note 3 to Wilson's Second M^ar \ 
Message. The armistice was however renewed in January, 1918, | 
the Bolsheviki doubtless hoping that the bad faith of the Ger- 
man officials would bring an effective protest from the German 
people. In this hope they were disappointed. 

3. In addition to "no annexations and no indemnities" the 
Bolsheviki delegates insisted on the "right of self-determina- ,' 
tion" for all subject nationalities. That is, the people of any i 
province, Poland, for instance, should be allowed to determine ^ 
the character of their government, and whether they should be <i 
independent or incorporate themselves with others. To do this \ 
therefore they would have to be unmolested, and the Bolsheviki ] 
demanded that the German troops evacuate the Russian o^- '; 
cupied territory. This the Germans refused to do. (Cf. Note ; 
3 to Second War Message.) The Germans likewise refused to ; 
allow the transfer of the negotiations to Stockholm, where the ^ 
Russians doubtless felt they would be freer than in their own i 
occupied territory. I 

The Bolsheviki could not be recognized as the regularly con- 
stituted government of Russia since they arrived at power by '] 
overthrowing the ministry established by the Russian Duma ] 
and forced the Constituent Assembly, which alone had author- i 
ity to ratify or constitute a government, to -disperse (Dec. 11, ; 
1917). For this reason as well as the patent bad faith of ' 
the Central Powers none of the Allies sent representatives to j 
the Congress. 

210. 4. Representatives were present from Austria, Turkey, and 
Bulgaria as well as from Germany, though the former, as in 
other matters of policy, seem to have been entirely dominated 
by the German representatives. These included General von 
Hoffmann, Military Commander of the District, and von Klihl- 
mann, the German Foreign Secretary. It is evident that they 
did not speak in the spirit of liberalism. 

211. 5. Cf. in this volume A World League for Peace (pp. 102- 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 91 

ge 
112)^ War Message (p. 137), Reply to the Pope (pp. 151-155), 
Second War Message (pp. 194-203). 

6. Lloyd George's address delivered only a few days before 
President Wilson's present speech was so similar in spirit that 
it was at first stated that the two had consulted with each 
other. It appears now that there had been no consultation and 
that each was merely expressing the fundamental principles of 
those who combat Prussian militarism. The two are agreed on 
practically all points though President Wilson expressed a 
more hopeful and sympathetic attitude toward the present 
revolutionary government of Russia. 

•• 7. On Nov. 2, 1917, Kerensky announced that Russia 
had done her work in the war and was worn out. After that 
the disintegration of her political and industrial life was rapid 
and she seemed to be warding off collapse with difficulty. 

!• 8. Cf. War Message and Notes. 

^- 9. Cf. A World League for Peace, pp. 108-109. 

10. Germany had always opposed arbitration and disarma- 
ment. She was the one great power which had steadily refused 
to sign an arbitration treaty with the United States. Not only 
have her influential writers and statesmen glorified war but 
the former Emperor himself had done so. His was the most 
serious opposition encountered at the Hague Peace Conferences. 
Andrew D. White, late Ambassador to Germany, reports in 
his Autobiography, Vol. II, p. 265, "He (Count Miinster, chair- 
man of the German delegation) insisted that arbitration must 
be injurious to Germany; that Germany is prepared for war 
as no other country is or can he; that she can mohilize her 
army in ten days; and that neither France, Russia, nor any 
other power can do. this. Arbitration, he said, would simply 
give rival powers time to put themselves in readiness, and 
would therefore be a great disadvantage to Germany." 

5. 11. No accredited spokesman for Germany had yet announced 
Germany's willingness to withdraw from Belgium. Her plans 
are best seen in the following interview between our ex- Ambas- 
sador James W. Gerard and von Bethmann-Hollweg: 



92 Democracy Today 

Page 

''Finally in January, 1917, when he (Bethmann-HoUweg) 
was again talking of peace, I said, * What are these peace terms 
to which you refer continually? Will you allow me to ask a 
few questions as to the specific terms of peace? First, are the 
Germans willing to withdraw from Belgium?' The chancellor 
answered, 'Yes, but with guarantees.' I said, 'What are these 
guarantees?' He said, 'We must positively have the forts of 
Liege and Namur; we must have other forts and garrisons 
throughout Belgium. We must have possession of the railroad 
l^nes. We must have possession of the ports and other means 
of communication. The Belgians will not be allowed to main- 
tain an army, but we must have the commercial control of 
Belgium.' I said, 'I do not see that you have left much for 
the Belgians except that King Albert will have the right to 
reside in Brussels with an honor guard.' And the chancellor \ 
said, ' We can not allow Belgium to be an outpost of England ' ; j 
and I said, ' I do not suppose the English, on the other hand, ■ 
wish it to become an outpost of Germany, especially as von 
Tirpitz has said that the coast of Flanders should be retained 
in order to make war on England and America.' I continued, 
'How about northern France?' He said, 'We are willing to : 
leave northern France, but there must be a rectification of the ; 
frontier.' " (James W. Gerard: My Four Years in Germany ^ , 
1917, pp. 365-366.) \ 

12. Alsace-Lorraine, rich provinces belonging to France pre- \ 
vious to 1870, contain 5,604 square miles of territory and a 1 
population of 1,874,014. After the Franco-Prussian War Germany j 
took the provinces as a part of the price of peace, despite the ' 
protest of the inhabitants. They were at once made imperial 
territory, directly subject to the German Emperor and the 
Federal Council. The so-called constitution of 1911 did not 
improve the strained relations between the provinces and the 
Government, which throughout had been unable to reconcile a j 
large portion of the inhabitants or to prevent them from show- 
ing their attachment to France on every occasion. 
2'« 13. The districts around Trent and Trieste to the north of 
Italy are mainly or in part Italian in population, and since the 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 93 

Page 

founding of the present Kingdom of Italy (1861) attempts 

have been made to incorporate these Italian districts into 

the kingdom. 

2IG 14. At this time the Czechs (Bohemians) in Austria and 

the Jugo-Slavs in Hungary were very seriously discriminated 

against and deprived of their national rights. 

15. At present Serbia has no seaport. (Cf. Article 11^ p. 
214.) 

16. Cf. A World League for Peace, page 108. 

Address to Cois^gress 

2'9 1. The Austrian cominunications throughout 1918 seem to 
have been couched in more conciliatory terms than the Ger- 
man. Until October, however, it is plain that Austria was 
acting in concert with the Berlin government. Indeed, 
sometimes it would seem as if she acted at the suggestion, 
if not the dictation, of Germany. Austria, however, was 
more anxious ^or peace, because of her serious internal situ- 
ation, which was M'orse than Germany's, both on the eco- 
nomic and the political side. In addition to the distress 
due to lack of textiles and food, the discontent was very 
marked among the population, and especially among the 
peoples of the oppressed nationalities, particularly the 
Czecho-Slovaks and the Jugo-Slavs. The failure of the 
Austrian offensive along the Piave in the early summer of 
1918 made it plain that Austria must grow weaker the 
longer the war continued. This being the case, she was 
anxious to have peace negotiations started even before they 
were begun by Germany. 

220 2. It was announced in the press that Count Czernin had 
declared that he had communicated the substance of his 
address to President Wilson before it was delivered. The 
President disclaims any such advance knowledge, and prob- 
ably wishes to make it plain here that he does not care to 
discuss such matters privately. To do so would be in con- 
tradiction with Article I of his Program of the World's 



94 Democracy Today 

Page 

Peace which insists upon "open covenants of peace/' and 
that diplomacy shall proceed always "frankly and in the 
public view." 

3. The time has not come to write the history of the 
Peace of Brest-Litovsk. It should be said, however, that 
that peace was not made with the Russian people or their 
representatives, but with the leaders of the Bolshevik Party, 
who had driven out the Kerensky government and dispersed dj 
the delegates to the Constituent Assembly. There is also* 
unfortunately a suspicion that there was a certain amount 
of collusion and fraud with regard to the negotiations. ,: 
The Bolshevik leaders issued an invitation to the Entente ^ 
Allies to participate in the negotiations and submitted cer- J 
tain principles, such as the recognition of the right to self- 
determination of peoples and no annexations or indemnities, 
and that all negotiations should be conducted in the open. 
These the representatives of the German civil power an- 
nounced that they accepted. The Allies refused to partici- 
pate. The negotiations were ostensibly carried on in the i 
open, though there was a suspicion at the time that dust j 
was being thrown into the eyes of the public. It was ap- I 
parent after the conclusion of the peace that the principles > 
had not been adhered to, that the German military author- 
ities were imposing their own terms, and it was suspected | 
that in spite of all the publicity there were secret articles 
to the conventions. This suspicion became a certainty when, j 
in late September, 1918, at the sitting of the Main Com- 
mittee of the Reichstag, the socialist Scheidemann criticized 
the government for the "treaties supplementary to the 
Brest-Litovsk convention," and announced that it was char- 
acteristic that Dr. Solf, who was a member of the govern- 
ment at that time, knew nothing of these treaties. It is 
plain therefore that the secret articles were not only hidden 
from the general public but even from certain members of 
the civil power of Germany. 

222 4. See Note 9 to page 201, Second War Message. 

5. The Reichstag passed a resolution on July 19, 1917, 
ajinouncing that Germany had taken up arms in defense of 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 95 

Page 

its liberty and independence and for the integrity of its 
territories. It contained the following phrases : "The 
Reichstag labors for peace and a mutual understanding 
and lasting reconciliation among the nations. Forced 
acquisitions of territory and political, economic, and financial 
violations are incompatible Avith such a peace." When a 
little later, through the collapse of Russia, possibilities of 
annexation and the violation of these principles appeared 
at Brest-Litovsk and at Bucharest (when peace was forced 
upon Roumania), these resolutions were disregarded with- 
out, it must be said, any serious protests from the Reichstag 
itself. 

224 6. To interfere in European affairs would be a violation 
of the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine. President Wilson has 
made it plain tliat we were forced to enter the war against 
the Central Powers. We did so vrith no desire of terri- 
torial or other gain. He had, however, also insisted that 
we were interested in securing a lasting peace and that 
territorial questions must therefore be settled in such a way 
as not to leave the seeds for future wars. 

225 7.. From the first President Wilson had insisted upon the 
necessity of an independent Poland.* See A World League 
for Peace which in January, 1917. called for "a united, inde- 
pendent, and autonomous Poland" (page 108). This demand 
is repeated again in the Program of the World's Peace, 
Article XIII, page 216. 

The End of Selfish Dominion 
229 1. Congress declared war on Germany April 6, 1917. 

2. This address was delivered by President Wilson at 
the opening of the campaign for the Third Liberty Loan. 
231 3. The German peace proposals on December 12, 1916, 
which were addressed to all the belligerents, make this 
statement. It is also implied in the Reichstag Resolution 
of July 19, 1917. On September 15, 1918, the Austro- 
Hungarian government sent a note to all the belligerent 
governments asking them "to send delegates to a confi- 



96 Democracy Today 

Page 

deiitial and unbinding discussion on the basic principles for 
the conclusion of peace." This action was taken with the 
approval of Germany, and in Germany's reply to the note 
of her ally she announced her willingness to do this. With- 
in an hour of the time that the Austro-Hungarian note was 
received at Washington, President W^ilson answered: 

"The Government of the United States feels that there 
is only one reply which it can make to the suggestion of 
the Imperial Austro-Hungarian Government. It has re- 
peatedly and with entire candor stated the terms upon 
which the United States would consider peace and can and 
will entertain no proposal for a conference upon a matter 
concerning which it has made its position and purpose so 
plain." 

4. The German Chancellor, Count von Hertling, replied 
to President Wilson's speech of January 8, 1918, on January 
24. President Wilson summarized that reply in his speech 
of February 11. The general tone of Hertling's reply was 
far from conciliatory and, as the President said though lie 
seemed to agree to the principles, in almost every case his 
suggested application of these principles belied the prin- 
ciples themselves. He announced agreement with the policy 
of no forcible annexations, but refused to give up Alsace- 
Lorraine and removed the "Belgian affair" from the entire 
discussion. With regard to France, he said that the evacu- 
ation "must take account of Germany's vital interests" and 
with regard to points 9, 10', 11, and 12 he left those to 
Austria-Hungary and Turkey to be decided only by the 
powers concerned. He announced that the negotiations at 
Brest-Litovsk were "conducted with full publicity" (see 
Note 3 to page 222, Message to Congress) . 

5. After the Central Powers had made peace with the 
Bolshevist Government and with the Ukraine, Roumania 
was cut off from her allies and forced to conclude peace at 
Bucharest on May 6, 1918. By this peace she was despoiled 
of her rich province Dobrudja, part of which was given to 
Bulgaria, and the Germans set up a condominium over the 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 97 

Page 

most important part between Constanza and the mouths of 

the Danube. This gave her control of the pipe lines to the 

rich Roumanian oil fields, which Roumania was forced to 

lease to her for ninety-nine years. In addition Austria took 

for herself stretches along the previous Roumanian frontier, 

including the Carpathian passes. She was "compensated" 

by being allowed to unite with Bessarabia, which had 

formerly been part of Russia, and whose National Assembly 

had voted for union with Roumania. The attitude of the 

Roumanians is well represented in the statement of General 

Averescu, the Prime Minister: 

"If Roumania accepts the humiliating German peace 
terms and is ready to yield to her enemies the dearest part 
of her territory, she does it not only to spare the lives 
of the remnants of her army, but for the sake of her Allies, 
too. If Roumania refuses the German conditions today she 
may be able to resist another month, but the results will 
be fatal. A month later she might have to lose even the 
shadow of independence which is left to her now; and then, 
no doubt, the Germans would deal with her in the same 
way as they dealt with occupied France and with Belgium. 
The whole Roumanian army would be made prisoners, and 
would be sent to work on the western front against the 
Allies, while the civilian population would be compelled to 
work in ammunition and other factories for the Kaiser's 
army. I fouglit in the ranks in 1877 to help my country 
to win the Dobrudja. You may imagine how I feel now, 
having to sign the treaty which gives it to our worst ene- 
mies. But we are compelled to amputate an important 
part of our body in order to save the rest of it. However 
painful it may be, we are bound to do it." 

With the collapse of Bulgaria in September, 1918, and 
the advance of the allied armies in the Balkans, the posi- 
tion of Roumania was much improved, and it was evident 
that the shameful peace forced upon her could not be 
maintained. 
233 6. See President Wilson's Address of January 8, 1918. 



98 Democracy Today 

Page 

7. President Wilson was doubtless thinking not only of, 
the peace of Brest-Litovsk ( see Note 3 to President Wilson's 
Reply to Chancellor von HertUng and Count Czernin) but 
also of Germay's selfish and rapacious conduct in the East 
and in the Baltic provinces after the conclusion of that peace. 

The Mount Veknon Address 

236 1. It was at Pamnymede, an island in the Thames, that 
the English Barons in 1215 forced King John to agree to 
and sign the Magna Charta, or Great Charter which was 
the foundation of English liberty and one of the great steps 
in the creation of modern democracy. The Barons, as the 
President says, were acting for the whole of England, and 
the rights they won were extended to all. One of its famous 
provisions laid the basis of the English judicial system and^ 
ran: "No free man shall be seized, or imprisoned, or dis- 
possessed, or outlawed, or in any way brought to ruin. We 
will not go against any man, save by legal judgment of his 
peers or by the law of the land." Another article ran : "To 
no man will we sell, or deny, or delay right or justice." In 
addition, the great reforms of the past reigns were recog- 
nized and the basis laid on which rests English parlia- 
mentary life. The riglits which the Barons claimed for 
themselves they claimed for the nation at large. 

237 2. Diplomatic representatives of the foreign nations were 
present at the ceremony. 

238 3. This article was specifically quoted in President Wil- 
son's note to the German Government, October 14, 1918, 
in reply to their request for an armistice. 

239 4. Note that all of these articles, like those of the Janu- 
ary 8 speech, have to do with the rights and status of na- 
tions. Indeed, it would seem that as the war progressed it 
became clear that the questions at issue really centered in 
the one problem of the rights and duties of nations great 
and small. In fact just as the Wars of Religion were fought 
to determine the rights to freedom of conscience, and were 



Biograpliical and Explanatory Notes 99 

Page 

to lay the basis out of which tlie idea of religious liberty 

and toleration was finally to spring, and thus complete the 

Avork of the Reformation, so this war also would seem to 

end that period in history which marked the growth of 

nationalities and their final arrival at independence. 

Peace with Justice 

240 1. Although the Fourth Liberty Loan was the largest 
loan ever called for by a government from its people, the 
results justified the President's confidence. The amount, 
$6,000,000,000, was oversubscribed. 

243 2. For the peace of Brest-Litovsk, see Xote 3 in President 
Wilson's Reply to Chancellor von Eertling and Count 
Czernin. 

3. For the peace of Bucharest, see Note 5 to President 
Wilson's Speech The End of Selfish Dominion, April 6, 1918. 

4, Our inability to deal with the then "monarchical 
autocrats" of Germany is brought out very plainly in the 
concluding sentences of President Wilson's Reply to the 
German Government of October 23, 1918, in the negotiations 
for an armistice. 

^44 5. A League of Nations was one of the central points 
in every one of President Wilson's statements on peace from 
the time of his address to the Senate of Jan. 22, 1917. It 
means the final abandonment of any idea of "balance of 
power," for which he would substitute a "concert of power." 
This idea received widespread acceptance among allied 
statesmen, though there seemed to be no agreement on the 
terms of Germany's admittance to such a League. Some 
held that the League should be started by the present allied 
powers, and that other nations, especially Germany, were to 
be admitted only as they proved themselves qualified for 
membership. A treatise on The League of Nations was 
published by Viscount Edward Grey in June, 1918, and the 
House of Lords late in that month debated and approved 
the idea. 



100 Democracy Today 



Page 

248 6. The phrase "no annexations and no indemnities" seems 
to have originated with the people. It was heard in social- 
ist circles and! then re-echoed in Russia where it was made 
a slogan before the peace of Brest-Litovsk. 

7. Such demands were frequently made in Parliament by 
members of the British Labor Party; and in the French 
Chamber of Deputies by the Socialists. The Socialist and 
Labor Parties of Great Britain, France, Italy, and Belgium 
issued a pamphlet, "A Clean Peace," on their terms of 
peace along the general line here indicated. They accepted 
the four articles of President Wilson's Reply to Chancellor 
von Flertling and Count Czernin, and also insisted on en- 
forcing Wilson's idea of "making the world safe for democ- 
racy." Attempts were frequently made to bring about 
meetings of all socialists of belligerent nations beginning 
with the Stockholm Conference. These were unsuccessful 
largely because of the suspicion, seemingly warranted, that ; 
the German government was using the socialist party as a 
cat's-paw to obtain its ends. 



Attitude of the United States Toward Mexico 

250 1. From the beginning of President Wilson's administra- 
tion, Mexico had been in a state of turmoil, which at times 
assumed proportions of serious civil war. In 1913 the 
United States had refused to recognize General Huerta, who 
after the murder of President Madero had made himself 
military dictator. There was much disorder and marauding 
by armed bands of guerillas, besides the armed factions who 
were fighting for the control of the Government. This re- 
sulted in the death of a number of American citizens and 
in the loss of much American property. President Wilson, 
however, refused to intervene, though an important element 
in the United States was urging that this be done in order 
to protect the interests of United States citizens in Mexico. 
The President announced that his policy was one of "watch- 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 101 



age 



ful waiting." With regard to this policy General Car- 
ranza's legal representative at Washington was to announce 
on November 2, 1917, "I do not hesitate to say, now that we 
see it in retrospect, that the policy pursued by President 
Wilson was the only one that could have produced the 
re-establishment of constitutional government in Mexico, 
and it has already proved to be the biggest asset the United 
States has in Mexico." 

This refusal to intervene in Mexican affairs or to take 
advantage of Mexico's disorganization also contributed to 
win back for the United States much of the good will 
of South American countries which had been alienated by 
our action in Panama before the building of the Panama 
Canal. 

2. On April 9, 1914, a party of American bluejackets, who 
in a launch flying the United States flag, had landed at 
Tampico to purchase gasoline, were arrested by troops of 
General Huerta. They were released soon after. Admiral 
Mayo demanded that as the American flag had been insulted 
a salute should be fired to the flag. President Wilson in- 
sisted to Huerta on April 18 that this must be done. Huerta 
was obdurate. While the matter was pending. President 
Wilson ordered the seizure of the customs at Vera Cruz to 
prevent ammunition on board a German steamer from being 
landed, and Vera Cruz was occupied by American troops. 
The diplomatic representatives of the ABC powers (Ar- 
gentine, Brazil, and Chile) were requested to join a confer- 
ence as mediators. The United States troops withdi-ew on 
November 23. General Huerta was rapidly losing his power, 
and left Mexico for Spain though the situation was not much 
improved by his departure, owing mainly to dissensions be- 
tween Generals Carranza and Villa, who had previously 
worked together for the Constitutionalist Party. In Janu- 
ary, 1916, Villa's band stopped a train, took off nineteen 
Americans, and after lining them up against a wall, shot 
them. He was now acting like an outlaw and desperado, and 
on March 9 crossed the border into New Mexico at Colum- 



103 DcuLocracy Today 

Page 

bus, sacked and looted the town, and killed eleven civilian 
and nine troopers. Serious difficulties arose with Generj 
Carranza, who was head of the de facto government, whe 
the United States asked permission to pursue Villa o 
Mexican territory. In spite of serious objections by Gen 
eral Carranza an understanding was finally reached and ai 
American force under General Pershing was sent across th 
border to capture Villa, since Carranza was unable to mainl 
tain order. American troops therefore entered Mexico an(^ 
continued their pursuit of Villa. He withdrew to the in| 
terior of Mexico for the rest of the year and remained av 
large. Important contingents of the United States National 
Guard were ordered to the Mexican border to maintain? 
order. 

251 3. There was not the slightest doubt about the activity 
of German spies in Mexico or their attempt to start trouble 
between that country and ourselves. In January, 1915, Ger- 
man agents began intriguing with General Huerta, the un- 
successful claimant to the Mexican presidency. When 
Huerta sailed from Spain to New York, von Rintelen, a 
German of high rank and friend of the Crown Prince, met 
him there. Huerta proposed an invasion of Mexico. Von 
Rintelen agreed to furnish him arms, ammunition, and pos 
sibly German reservists. It was hoped to start trouble ui 
Mexico and then unite Mexico against the United States.; 
Such a w^ar would have tied up the oil wells at Tampico,!! 
from which the British navy draws supplies, and would 
have kept the United States so busy that it could not allowj 
the exportation of arms to Europe. It would further hav^ 
compelled the United States to keep hands off in Europe! 
Huerta started west, pretending to visit the San Francisc(n 
Exposition, but when he turned south toward El Paso he was 
arrested by United States Government agents. After that 
time there followed a series of plots by Germans to stir up| 
trouble for us in Mexico. Several Mexican newspapers werel 
said to be in the pay of the German Government, and thel 
German propaganda was very active in every way. I 



1 

\ 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 103 

ige 

How active these German spies were, we may judge from 
the fact that tlie notorious Zimmermann note (see note 22 
to page 136 on President Wilson's War Message) was ad- 
dressed to the German minister in Mexico. In a letter 
dated March 8, 1916, which has been made public by the 
State Department, the German minister to Mexico, Herr 
von Eckhart, wrote the German chancellor, asking him to 
reward Herr Folke Cronholm, the Swedish charge d'affaires 
in Mexico City, for his services in behalf of Germany. 
"He is," the letter ran, '"the only diplomat through whom 
information from the hostile camp can be obtained. More- 
over, he acts as intermediary^ for official intercourse between 
the legation and your excellency." Herr von Eckhart rec- 
ommended, however, that Herr Cronholm's reward, which 
was to be some sort of decoration, be kept secret till the 
close of the war in order to avoid suspicion. 

2 4. President Wilson had opened the Red Cross Campaign 
for funds with a speech in the Metropolitan Opera House 
in New York City, in which he had said that the United 
States was not going to withhold its assistance from Russia. 

4 5. We have seen that in the famous message of President 
Monroe he had stated that it was a principle of American 
policy not to meddle in European affairs, and had given 
warning that any attempt on the part of the monarchies of 
Europe "to extend their system to anj^ portion of this hemi- 
sphere would be considered by the United States as danger- 
ous to our peace and safety." The message also stated that 
the American continent was no longer subject to coloniza- 
tion. This action had been taken by the United States inde- 
pendent of the South American powers. President Wilsoil 
was now urging that the Monroe Doctrine be accepted as a 
principle by all of the American peoples and that measures 
be taken to enforce it against any one, even ourselves, who 
might try to infringe it. 



104 Democracy Today 

Page 

The Exd of the War 

257 1. On October 6, 1918, the German government sent a com- 
munication to President Wilson in which it announced its 
readiness to make peace on the basis of the terms laid down 
by him in the speech of January 8 and his subsequent ad- 
dresses. After the exchange of several notes in which Ger 
m,any gave assurances that a new government, controlled by' 
the people, was in power and that they accepted these terms 
not merely for purposes of discussion, but in order to agree 
upon the practical details of their application, the corr& 
spondence was turned over to the Supreme War Council and 
Germany was instructed that the military details of the 
armistice would have to be arranged with Marshal Foch.,; 
The German delegates met General Foch and the allied rep- 
resentatives behind the French lines and accepted the terms 
of the armistice on November 11. Later in the day Presi- ;- 
dent Wilson announced this momentous event to the as-^ 
sembled Congress in the present address. 

2. At this point the President read to Congress the terms 
of the armistice as they had been decided upon before Mar- 
shal Foch met the German representatives. The terms as 
announced by the President had been slightly altered in; 
some respects during the conference between General Foch 
and the German delegates, and were not therefore in all 
points similar to the President's announcement. They in- 
cluded immediate cessation of hostilities six hours after 
the signing, immediate evacuation of all the invaded coun- 
tries, including Alsace-Lorraine, to be completed within fif 
teen days, and the repatriation within the same period of 
all inhabitants of occupied territory. The German armies 
were to surrender 5,000 guns, 30,000 machine guns, 3,000 
minenwerfers, 2,000 aeroplanes, a great quantity of railroad 
equipment, locomotives, and motor lorries. They were 
also to return without reciprocity all allied and United 
States prisoners of war. They were furthermore to evacuate 
all territory up to the Rhine and allow Allied and United 
States garrisons to hold the principal crossings. On the 



Biographical and Explanatory Notes 105 



age 



right bank of the Rhine, they were to leave a neutral zone 
of ten kilometers. With regard to the naval conditions, 
Germany was to surrender all of her submarines, 50 de- 
stroyers, 6 battle cruisers, 10 battleships, 8 light cruisers, 
and other miscellaneous vessels. 

Germany on the financial side was to make restitution for 
all damage done by the German army and to return immedi-' 
ately all the financial resources touching public or private 
interests in the invaded countries. She was also to abandon 
the treaties of Bucharest and Brest-Litovsk, withdraw all 
her troops and agents from Roumania and Russia, and give 
the Allies free access to the territories evacuated. 

58 3. The internal situation was evidently giving great con- 
cern to the German government, which changed very rapidly. 
The German Emperor left the country and crossed the 
frontier into Holland. The heads of the lesser German 
states likewise gave up their thrones. Prince Maximilian 
of Baden, who had been Chancellor when the negotiations 
regarding the armistice began, resigned and seemed finally 
to have been succeeded by the socialist Ebert. Disorders 
were reported in various parts of Germany, though at this 
time they were probably not so serious as announced in the 
press. The food situation was acute and German women 
issued appeals to Miss Jane Addams and to Mrs. Woodrow 
Wilson to alleviate the distress in Germany. The Allies 
and the President had promised that this would be done, 
and Mr. Herbert C. Hoover, the National Food Adminis- 
trator wlio had been so successful in Belgium and in the 
United States, immediately left for Europe to investigate 
the food situation there. 

59 4. It was plain that we were no longer dealing with 
William II. In the first days after the signing of the armis- 
tice the changes in the German government were very rapid, 
and of course it would necessarily be a long time before 
the German constitution would be changed and before it 
M'ould be known what the form of the new German govern- 
ment would be. 



106 Democracy Today 

David Lloyd George (1863 ) 

David Lloyd George was born, 1863, in Manchester, Eng-- 
land, of Welsh parentage, and was educated for tlie law. , 
lie was President of the Board of Trade, 1905-1908, and 1 
Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1908-1915. Long before the,^ 
outbreak of the war he was recognized as one of the leaders;^ 
in the liberal movement in England. In 1915 he was made 
Minister of Munitions, in 1916 Secretary of State for War, , 
and then Premier. His speeches are distinguished by their' 
clearness of vision, and tonic, optimistic spirit, as well as 
bv their forceful, original, incisive manner of statement. 



App. 



Meaning of America's Entrance into the War 

1. See President Wilson's ^Yar Message, April 2, 1917. 

2. Against Denmark for a portion of her territory, 1864; 
against Austria, to establish Prussian supremacy over the 
German States, 1866; against France, for Alsace-Lorraine 
and a huge indemnity, 1870. 

3. The Kaiser in his speeches to his troops always im- 
pressed them with the idea of their invincibility. In them 
occur phrases such as: "The only pillar on which the Em- 
pire rested was the army. So it is today." (Oct. 18, 1894.) 

4. Since the early sixties the main interest of the rulers 
of Germany was in the development of the army, and since ' 
the nineties, of the army and navy. 

5. With respect to the French Colonies in Africa Ger- 
many's course was that of a swaggering bully and 1)oth i 
in 1905 and 1911 she seeined to have brought France to the^?, 
verge of war. On the latter occasion she forced France to ai 
humiliating cession of African territory. That Germany! 
did not precipitate actual war was looked upon as a regret- 
table weakness by many leaders of German opinion. 

6. Delcasse, in connection with the African Colonies ques- 
tion (see note 5), was driven from his position as French |i. 
^Minister of Foreign Affairs bv the Germans. 

7. Battle of Vimy Ridge, April 9, 1917. 



BRITAIN'S WAR AIMS NEWLY DEFINED 

David Lloyd George 

[address delivered at the trade union conference 
on man power, january 5, 1918.] 

When the Government invite organized labor in this country 
to assist them to maintain the might of their armies in the field, 
its representatives are entitled to ask that any misgivings and 
doubts which PZy of them may have about the pi^rpose to which 
this precious strength is to be applied should be definitely 
cleared. Ano what is true of organized labor is equally true 
of all citizens in this country, without regard to grade or 
avocation. 

When men by the million are being called upon to suffer and 
die, and vast populations are being subjected to sufferings and 
privations of war on a scale unprecedented .in the history of 
the world, tliey are entitled to know for what cause or causes 
they are making the sacrifice. 

It is only the clearest, greatest, and justest of causes that can 
justify the continuance, even for one day, of this unspeakable 
agony f\t the nation, and we ought to be able to state clearly 
and definitely not only the principles for which we are fighting, 
but also their definite and concrete application to the war map 
of the world. 

We have arrived at the most critical hour in this terrible 
conflict, and before any Government takes a fateful decision 
as to the conditions under which it ought either to terminate 
or to continue the struggle, it ought to be satisfied that the 
conscience of the nation is behind these conditions, for nothing 
else can sustain the effort which is necessary to achieve a 
righteous end to this war. 

I have, therefore, during the last few days taken special pains 
to ascertain the view and attitude of representative men of all 
sections of thought and opinion in the country. 

Last week I had the privilege not merely of perusing the 

loV 



108 Democracy Today 

declared war aims of the Labor Party, but also of discussing 
in detail with labor leaders the meaning and intention of that 
declaration. 

I have also had opportunity of discussing this same momentous 
question with Mr. Asquith and Viscount Grey. Rad it not been 
that the Nationalist leaders are in Ireland engaged in endeav- 
oring to solve the tangled problem of Irish self-government, I 
should have been happy to exchange views with them, but Mr.! 
Redmond,^ speaking on their behalf, has, with his usual lucidity 
and force, in many of his speeches made clear what his ideas 
are as to the object and purpose of the war. I have also had 
an opportunity of consulting certain representatives of the 
great dominions overseas. 

I am glad to be able to say, as a result of all these discus- 
sions, that, although the Government are alone responsible for 
the actual language I purpose using, there is a national agree- 
ment as to the character and purpose of our war aims and peace 
conditions, and in what I say to you today, and through you to 
the world, I can venture to claim that I am speaking not merely 
the mind of the Government, but of the nation and of the 
empire as a whole. 

We may begin by clearing away some misunderstandings and 
stating w^hat we are not fighting for. 

We are not fighting a war of aggression against the German 
people. Their leaders have persuaded them that they are fight- 
ing a war of self-defense against a league of rival nations, bent 
on the destruction of Germany. That is not so. The destruction 
or disruption of Germany or the German people has never been 
a war aim with us from the first day of this war to this day. 

Most reluctantly, and indeed quite unprepared for the dread- 
ful ordeal, we were forced to join in this war, in self-defense 
of the violated public law of Europe and in vindication of the 
most solemn treaty obligations on which the public system of 
Europe rested and on which Germany had ruthlessly trampled 
in her invasion of Belgium. We had to join in the struggle or 
stand aside and see Europe go under and brute force triumph 
over public right and international justice. 

It was only the realization of that dreadful alternative that 



Britain's War Aims Defined 109 

forced the British people into the war, and from that original 
attitude they have never swerved. They have never aimed at a 
breaktip of the German people or the disintegration of their 
State or country. Germany has occupied a great position in 
the world. It is not our wish or intention to question or destroy 
that position for the future, but rather to turn her aside from 
hopes and schemes of military domination. 

Nor did we enter this war merely to alter or destroy the 
imperial Constitution of Germany, much as we consider that 
military and autocratic Constitution a dangerous anachronism , 
in the twentieth century. Our point of view is that the adop- 
tion of a really democratic Constitution by Germany would be 
the most convincing evidence that her old spirit of military 
domination has, indeed, died in this w-ar and would make it 
much easier for us to conclude a broad, democratic peace with 
her. But, after all, that is a question for the German peoplf^ 
to decide. 

We are not fighting to destroy Austria-Hungary or to deprive 
Turkey of its capital or the rich lands of Asia Minor and 
Thrace which are predominantly Turkish. 

It is now more than a year since the President of the United 
States, then neutral, addressed to the belligerents a suggestion 
that each side should state clearly the aims for which they 
were fighting. 

We and our allies responded by the note of Jan. 10, 1917. 

To the President's appeal the Central Empires made no reply, 
and in spite of many abjurations, both from their opponents 
and from neutrals, they have maintained complete silence as to 
the objects for which they are fighting. Even on so crucial a 
matter as their intention with regard to Belgium they have 
uniformly declined to give any trustworthy indication. 

On Dec. 25 last, hoAvever, Count Czeruin, speaking on behalf 
of Austria-Hungary and her allies, did make a pronouncement 
of a kind. It is, indeed, deplorably vague. 

We are told that it is not the intention of the Central Powers 
to appropriate forcibly any occupied territory or to rob of its 
independence any nation which has lost its political independ- 
ence during the war. 



110 Democracy Today 

It is obvious that almost any scheme of conquest and annexa 
tion could be perpetrated T\^ithin the literal interpretation oi 
such a pledge. Does it mean that Belgium, Serbia, Montenegro, 
and Eumauia will be as independent and as free to direct theii 
own destinies as Germany or any other nation? Or does ii^ 
means that all manner of interferences and restrictions, political 
and economical, incompatible with the status and dignity of 
free and self-respecting people, are to be imposed? If this is 
the intention, then there will be one kind of independence for 
the great nation and an inferior kind of independence for the 
small nation. 

We must know what is meant, for equality of right among 
the nations, small as well as great, is one of the fundamental 
issues this country and her allies are fighting to establish in 
this war. 

Eeparation for the wanton damage inflicted on Belgian towns 
and villages and their inhabitants is emphatically repudiated. 
The rest of the so-called offer of the Central Powers is almost 
entirely a refusal of all concessions. All suggestions about tho 
autonomy of subject nationalities are ruled out of the peace 
terms altogether. The question whether any form of self- 
government is to be given to the Arabs, Armenians, or Syrians 
is declared to be entirely a matter for the Sublime Porte. A 
pious wish for the protection of minorities, Viii so far as it is 
practically realizable, ' ' is the nearest approach to liberty which 
the Central statesmen venture to make. 

On one point only are they perfectly clear and definite. 
Under no circumstances will the German demand for the restora- 
tion of the whole of Germany's colonies be departed from. All 
principles of self-determination, or, as our earlier phrase goes, 
government by the consent of the governed, here vanish into 
thin air. 

It is impossible to believe that any edifice of permanent peace 
could be erected on such a foundation as this. Mere lip-service 
to the formula of no annexations and no indemnities or the 
right of self-determination is useless. Before any negotiations 
can even be begun the Central Powers must realize the essential 
■^acts of the situation. 



Britain's War Aims Defined 111 

The days of the Treaty of A^ienna are long past. We can no 
longer submit the future of European civilization to the arbi- 
trary decisions of a few negotiators trying to secure by chicanery 
or persuasion the interests of this or that dynasty or nation. 

The settlement of the new Europe must be based on such 
grounds ot "'eason and justice as will give some promise of 
stability. Therefore, it is that we feel that government with 
the consent of the governed must be the basis of any territorial 
settlement in this war. For that reason, also, unless treaties 
be upheld, unless every nation is prepared, at whatever sacrifices, 
to honor the national signature, it is obvious that no treaty of 
peace can be worth the paper on which it is written. 

The first requirement, therefore, always put forward by the 
British Government and their allies has been the complete 
restoration, political, territorial, and economic, of independ- 
ence of Belgium and such reparation as can be made for the 
devastation of its towns and provinces. 

This is no demand for a war indemnity, such as that imposed 
on France by Germany in 1871. It is not an attempt to shift 
the cost of warlike operations from one belligerent to another, 
which may or may not be defensible. It is no more and no less 
than an insistence that before there can be any hope for stable 
peace, this great breach of the public law of Europe must be 
repudiated and so far as possible repaired. 

Reparation means recognition. Unless international right is 
recognized by insistence on payment for injury, done in defiance 
of its canons, it can never be a reality. 

Next comes the restoration of Serbia, Montenegro, and the oc- 
cupied parts of France, Italy, and Eumania. The complete with- 
drawal of the allied (Teutonic) armies, and the reparation for 
injustice done is a fundamental condition of permanent peace. 

We mean to stand by the French democracy to the death in 
the demand it makes for a reconsideration of the great wrong 
of 1871, when without any regard to the wishes of the popula- 
tion, two French provinces were torn from the side of France 
and incorporated in the German Empire. 

This sore has poisoned the peace of Europe for half a cen- 
tury, and, until it is cured, healthful conditions will not have 



112 Democracy Today 

been restored. There can be no better illustration of the folly 
and wickedness of using a transient military success to violate 
national right. 

I will not attempt to deal with the question of the Russian 
territories now in German occupation. The Russian policy since 
the revolution has passed so rapidly through so many phases 
that it is difficult to speak without some suspension of judg- 
ment as to what the situation will be when the final terms of 
European peace come to be discussed. 

Russia accepted war with all its horrors because, true to her 
traditional guardianship of the weaker communities of her race, 
she stepped in to protect Serbia from a plot against her inde- 
pendence. It is this honorable sacrifice which not merely brought 
Russia into the war, but France as well. 

France, true to the conditions of her treaty with Russia, 
stood by her ally in a quarrel which was not her own. Her 
chivalrous respect for her treaty led to the wanton invasion of 
Belgium, and the treaty obligations of Great Britain to that 
little land brought us into the war. 

The present rulers of Russia are now engaged, without any 
reference to the countries whom Russia brought into the war, 
in separate negotiations with their common enemy. I am in- 
dulging in no reproaches. I am merely stating the facts with 
a view to making it clear why Great Britain cannot be held 
accountable for decisions taken in her absence and concerning 
which she has not been consulted or her aid invoked. 

No one who knows Prussia and her designs upon Russia can 
for a moment doubt her ultimate intention. Whatever phrases 
she may use to delude Russia, she does not mean to surrender 
one of the fair provinces or cities of Russia now occupied by 
her forces. Under one name or another (and the name hardly 
matters) those Russian provinces will henceforth be in reality 
a part of the dominions of Prussia. They will be ruled by the 
Prussian sword in the interests of the Prussian autocracy, and 
the rest of the people of Russia will be partly enticed by 
specious phrases and partly bullied by the threat of continued 
war against an impotent army into a condition of complete 
economic and ultimate political enslavement to Germany. 



Britain's War Aims Defined 113 

We all deplore the prospect. The democracy of this country 
means to stand to the ,last by the democracies of France and 
Italy and all our other allies. We shall be proud to stand side 
by side by the new democracy of Kussia. So will America and so 
will France and Italy. But if the present rulers of Russia take 
action which is independent of their allies, we have no means of 
intervening to arrest the catastrophe which is assuredly befall- 
ing their country. Eussia can only be saved by her own people. 

We believe, however, that an independent Poland, comprising 
all those genuinely Polish elements who desire to form a part 
of it, is an urgent necessity for the stability of Western Europe. 

Similarly, though we agree with President Wilson that a 
break-up of Austria-Hungary is no part of our war aims, we 
feel that unless genuine self-government on true democratic 
principles is granted to those Austro-Hungarian nationalities 
who have long desired it, it is impossible to hope for a removal 
of those causes of unrest in that part of Europe which have so 
long threatened the general peace. 

On the same grounds we regard as vital the satisfaction of the 
legitimate claims of the Italians for union with those of their 
own race and tongue. We also mean to press that justice be 
done to the men of Eumanian blood and speech in their legiti- 
mate aspirations. If these conditions are fulfilled, Austria- 
Hungary would become a power whose strength would conduce 
to the permanent peace and freedom of Europe instead of being 
merely an instrument to the pernicious military autocracy of 
Prussia that uses the resources of its allies for the furtherance 
of its own sinister purposes. 

Outside of Europe we believe that the same principles should 
be applied. While we do not challenge the maintenance of the 
Turkish Empire in the homelands of the Turkish race with its 
capital at Constantinople, the passage between the Mediter- 
ranean and the Black Sea being internationalized and neutral- 
ized, Arabia, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine are, 
in our judgment, entitled to a recognition of their separate 
national conditions. 

What the exact form of that recognition in each particular 
case should be need not here be discussed beyond stating that 



11"!: Democracy Today 

it would be impossible to restore to their former sovereignty 
the territories to which I have already referred. 

Much has been said about the arrangements we have entered 
into with our allies on this and on other subjects. I can only 
say that as the new circumstances, like the Eussian collapse 
and the separate negotiations, have changed the conditions under 
which those arrangements were made, we are, and always have 
been, perfectly ready to discuss them with our allies. 

With regard to the German colonies, I have repeatedly de- 
clared that they are held at the disposal of a conference whose 
decision must have primary regard to the wishes and interests 
of the native inhabitants of such colonies. None of those ter- 
ritories are inhabited by Europeans. The governing considera- 
tion, therefore, must be that the inhabitants should be placed 
under the control of an administration acceptable to them- 
selves, one of whose main purposes will be to prevent their 
exploitation for the benefit of European capitalists or Gov- 
ernments. 

The natives live in their various tribal organizations under 
chiefs and councils who are competent to consult and speak 
for their tribes and members and thus to represent their wishes 
and interests in regard to their disposal. The general principle 
of national self-determination is, therefore, as applicable in 
their cases as in those of the occupied European territories. 

The German declaration that the natives of the German 
colonies have through their military fidelity in war shown their 
attachment and resolve under all circumstances to remain with 
Germany is applicable, not to the German colonies generally, 
but only to one of them, and in that case, German East Africa, 
the German authorities secured the attachment, not of the 
native population as a whole, which is and remains profoundly 
anti-German, but only of a small warlike class, from whom their 
askaris, or soldiers, were selected. These they attached to 
themselves by conferring on them a highly privileged position, 
as against the bulk of the native population, which enabled 
these askaris to assume a lordly and oppressive superiority 
over the rest of the natives. 

By this and other means thev secured the attachment of a 



Britain's War Aims Defined 115 

very small and insignificant minority, whose interests were di- 
rectly opposed to those of the rest of the population and for 
whom they have no right to speak. The German treatment of 
the native populations in their colonies has been such as amply 
to justify their fear of submitting the future of those colonies 
to the wishes of the natives themselves. 

Finally, there must be reparation for the injuries done in 
violation of international law. The peace conference must not 
forget our seamen and the services they have rendered to and the 
outrages they have suffered for the common cause of freedom. 

One omission we notice in the proposal of the Central Powers 
which seems to us especially regrettable. It is desirable and 
essential that the settlement after this war shall be one which 
does not in itself bear the seed of future war. But that is not 
enough. However wisely and w^ell we may make territorial and 
other arrangements, there will still be many subjects of inter- 
national controversy. Some, indeed, are inevitable. 

Economic conditions at the end of the w^ar will be in the 
highest degree difficult owing to the diversion of human effort 
to warlike pursuits. There must follow a world shortage of raw 
materials, which will increase the longer the war lasts, and it 
is inevitable that those countries which have control of raw 
materials will desire to help themselves and their friends first. 
Apart from this, whatever settlement is made will be suitable 
only to the circumiStances under which it is made, and as those cir- 
cumstances change, changes in the settlement will be called for. 

So long as the possibility of a dispute between nations con- 
tinues — that is to say, so long as men and women are dominated 
by impassioned ambition and war is the only means of settling 
a dispute — all nations must live under a burden, not only, of 
having from time to time to engage in it, but of being com- 
pelled to prepare for its possible outbreak. 

The crushing weight of modern armaments, the increasing 
evil of compulsory military service, the vast waste of wealth 
and effort involved in warlike preparation — these are blots on 
our civilization of which every thinking individual must be 
ashamed, For these and other similar reasons we are confident 
that a great attempt must be made to establish, by some inter* 



116 Democracy Today 

national organization, an alternative to war as a means of 
settling international disputes. 

After all, war is a relic of barbarism, and, just as law has 
succeeded violence as a means of settling disiDutes between 
individuals, so we believe that it is destined ultimately to take the 
place of war in the settlement of controversies between nations. 

If, then, we are asked what we are fighting for, we reply, 
as we have often replied, We are fighting for a just and a 
lasting peace, and we believe that before permanent peace can 
be hoped for three conditions must be fulfilled: First, the 
sanctity of treaties must be re-established; secondly, a terri- 
torial settlement must be secured, based on the" right of self- 
determination or the consent of the governed, and, lastly, we 
must seek, by the creation of some international organization, 
to limit the burden of armaments and diminish the probability 
of war. On these conditions its peoples are prepared to make 
even greater sacrifices than those they have yet endured. 



INDEX 

(Figures in italics refer to Appendix) 



Africa, 158 
Agassiz, 20 
Aid and comfort to enemies, giving, 

defined, 66 
/J lonquin, sinking of the, /^6 
Alien enemies, proclamation relating 

to, 205 
Alliances, entangling. 111 
Allies, help from United States, 132 
Alsace-Lorraine : 

Bitterly opposed to Prussian gov- 
ernment, 75 

Germany refuses to give up, 96 

Zabern incident, the, 75 
America, example of, 79 
America First, 81-89, 41 
American: 

Constitution, framers of, 33; text 
of, 9-28 

History, fascination of, 82 

Principles, defense of, 125 

Revolution, memories of, 81 

Spirit, meaning of, 91 

Wealth, 95 
Americanization, as regards immi- 
grants, 97 
Anarchy, 160 
Ancona case, the, 63 
Anglo-Saxon civilization, 158 
Annexations, Germany's schemes 

for, 69 
"Anzacs," 158 

Appropriations of public moneys, 206 
Arabic, sinking of the, 179, 54- 
Arcadia, 22 
Aristotle, 20, 31 
Armistice, terms of, 257, 104. 
Arras, battle of, 6 
Asturitts, sinking of the, 45 
Austria-Hungary: 

America declares war against, 203 



11 



Demands upon Serbia, 144, 73 
Endorses Germany's submarine 
policy, 137 

Australia, 158 

Autocratic governments, not to be 
trusted, 134 

Aztec, sinking of the, 46 

Bacon, Lord, 37 

Balance of power, 106, 171, 175, 42 

Bailli of Mirabeau, 44 

Balkan states: 

Problems of, 152, 198, 199, 210, 221 

Ruled by German Princes, 144 
Banking system of U. S. reorganized, 

66 
Bavarian king, extract from speech 

by, 66 
Belgium: 

Invasion of, 156, 171, 178 

Relief ships of, sunk, 45 

Restoration of, 225 
Berlin to Bagdad Railway, 185, 70, 74 
Bernhardi, von, "mouthpiece of the 

Prussian military caste," 66 
Bernstorff, Count von, dismissed by 

President Wilson, 55, 57, 68 
Bethlehem Steel Works, 68 
Bethmann Hollweg, fall of, 62 
Bill of Particulars, 64 
Bismarck, 176, 60, 61, 67 
Boers, the, 25, 32 
Bolshevik Party, 94 
Bopp, consul-general, conviction of, 61 
•Bourdaloue, 26, 32 
Boy-Ed, conspirator, 67 
Brandenburg, 174 
Brest-Litovsk, parleys at, 209, 210. 

220, 231, 94; treaty annulled, 105 
Britannic, sinking of the, 4^ 
British constitution, 27 ^ 

7 



118 



Democracy Today 



British Labor Party, 100 
Browning, Robert, 38 
Bucharest, peace of, 243 

Terms broken, 105 
Bundesrat: 

Body through which Kaiser con- 
trolled Germany, 61 

Composition of, 61 

Real power in German parliament, 
the, 61 
Bunker Hill, 158 

Canada, 158 

Capital and labor, question of, 191 

Caribbean, danger of German naval 

base in, 176 
Carlyle, Thomas, 36 
Central Powers: 

A single power, 146 

Signifies desire to discuss peace, 102 

Text of note from, 115 
Charles V, 26 

City of Memphis, sinking of the, 264 
Cleveland, Grover: 

Message of Washington, The, 
49-58, 38 

Biography of, 38 
Columbus, 27 
Commercial Enterprises of the 

United States, 67 
Communism, meaning of, 46 
Concert of powers. 111, 99 
Congress of the United States, extra- 
ordinary session of, 126 
Congress of Vienna, The, 201 
Conquest, not sought for by the 

United States, 137 
Constitution, American, 91, 122, l'6't, 

35 
Countries controlled by Germany, 186 
Court of review, 56 
Credit, granting to government, 131 
Czecho-Slovaks, 93 
Czernin, Count, 219, 225 

Daughters of the American Revolu- 
tion, address of President Wilson 
before, 81-89 



Days of 1776, 71 

Declaration of Independence, 66, 74 

Defense, national, demands of, 169 

Dekker, old dramatist, 32, S4 

DelcassS, French minister, driven 
from office by Germans, 106 

Democracy: 

Commands of, 101 

"Disease of," 24 

Faith in, 98 

Sacred mystery of, 97 

World to be made safe for, 137 

Diplomatic relations, severance of 
between United States and Ger- 
many, 113, 116 

Dirigibles, 161 

Disloyalty, repression of, 139 

Divine right of kings, 180, 80 

"Dollar diplomacy," 68 

Dominion, not sought by United 
States, 137 

Duties of the Citizen, The, 163-181 

Eckhart, von, German minister to 

Mexico, 103 
Effrontery, German official, 59 

Stated, 134, 135, 142, 160, 51, 
57, 59 
Emancipation of the Jews, 30 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 43 
Enemies of the Government, 205 
Enemy aliens, proclamations relat- j 

ing to, 205 1 

England, acquisition of colonies, 175 
English blockade, the, 44 
Entangling alliances. 111 
Equality: 

Of nations, 107 

Of rights, 107 

Of territory, 107 
Equipment of United States navy, 

131 
Equitable taxation, 131 
Espionage by Germany in United ' 

States, 134, 135, 142, 160 
Europe, racial and political units of, 

145 



Index 



119 



Falaha, sinking of the, 179 

Federal Reserve Act, 40 

Feudalism, making its last stand, 160 

Finland, 231 

First Napoleon, 44 

Flag, American: 

Meaning of, 70 

Of humanity, 73 
Flag Day Address, 141-150 
Foch, Marshal, 257, I04 
France: 

Acquisition of colonies, 175 

Colonies of, in Africa, 106 

Revolution in, 44, 35 
Frederick the Great, 171, 4^, 48, 62, 

67, 81 
Free governments, 45 
Freedom: 

Of life, 107 

Of the seas, 109, 112, 114, 127, 151 
French Revolution, 44, 35 
Fryt, sinking of the, 120 

Genghis Khan, 172, 81 
George, David, Lloyd, 1-8; 105 
German Colonies, disposition of, 221 
Germany: 

Armistice terms, 259 

Autocracy in, 43, 62 

Allies of, 161 

A natural foe to liberty, 136 

Commercial position of, 183 

Conceptions and plans, quotations 

showing, 64 ff- 
Condominium, Germany sets up, 

97 
Constitution of, 60 
Criminal intrigues of, in United 

States, 135, 143, 149, 179, 187 
Cruisers of, in the Dardanelles, 76 
Enemy of four-fifths of the world, 

152 
Fall of government, 259 
Foments Hindu plots on Pacific 

coast, 72 
Incites plots in Mexico against 

Unites States, 136 



Industrial development of, 77 

Insults and aggressions of, 142 

Irresponsible goverimient in, 138 

Military statesmen of, 146 

Mobilization of army of, 60 

Objects in war, 230, 232 

Outlines peace plan 146 

Plots in, 58, 71 

Press of, 121 

Ruthless naval program of, 117, 119 

Social democratic party in, 78, 79 

Socialists in, 148 

Spies in her Embassy at Washing- 
ton, 142 

Secret service, 68 

Strong peace party in, 49 

Submarine policy of, concerning 
Great Britain and Ireland, 119 

United States friendship for people 
of, 117, 133 

Word of present rulers of, not to be 
taken, 154 
Gloucester Castle, sinking of the, 4^ 
Gompers, Samuel, 188, 58 
Government: 

By consent of the governed, 107, 
112 

Granting credit to, 131 
Great Frederick, 174 
Grey, Viscount, 99 
Gulflight, sinldng of the, 179 

Hague, The, peace conferences at, 

170, 50, 73, 82 
Hamburg to Persian Gulf, control of 

desired by Germany, 146 
Healdton, sinking of the, 4^ 
Henry, Patrick, 158 
Herthng, von, 220, 222, 63 
Hindenburg line, 4 
Hindenburg, von. Marshal, 5 
HohenzoUern: 

Hereditary policy of, 173 

House of, 81 

Rulers of Europe, 70 
Holland, acquisition of colonies, 175 
Holy Roman Empire, The, 32 



120 



Democracy Today 



Hospital ships sunk by Germany, 127 
Housatonic, sinking of the, 120, ^5 
House and Senate, members of, 65 
House, Colonel, 187, 83 
Hudson, George, railway king, 42, 37 
Huerta, U. S. refuses to recognize, 100 
Humanity, cause of, for America, 85, 

110 
Hyphenated Americans, 94 

"Ichabod," 29 

Igel von, 57 

Immigrants, instruction of, 93, 95 

Indemnities, not sought by United 

States, 137 
Independence Square, 70 
India, German schemes about, 72 
India and Egypt, Germany plots re- 
bellions in, 144 
Industrial Workers of the World, 83 
International laws: 

Reasons for origin of, 127 

Reconsideration of, 109 

Violation of, by Germany, 113, 119, 
128, 159, 160, 171, 175 
International obligations, America's, 

103 
Intrigue, German, in United States, 

135, 143, 149, 179, 187 



Lazarus and Dives, 26, 33 
League of Honor, 134, 135 
League of nations, 221, 244, 245 
Lexington, 158 
Liberty : 

Principles of, 83 

Statue of, 83 
Liberty Loan, 229, 240 
Liege, treaty torn to pieces at, by 

Germany, 157 
Limitation: 

Of armies, 109 

Of navies, 109 
Lincoln: 

Biography of, S9 , 

Gettysburg address, 17, 30 

Preserver of republic, 62 

Second inaugural address, 56 
Loans, Liberty 229, 240 
Loans, vast, not desirable, 131 
Louis Napoleon, 42 
Lowell, James Russell: 

Address on Democracy, 13-48, 31 

Biography, 30 
Lusitania, sinking of the, 15D, 179,', 

54, 57 
Luxemburg, invasion of, 171 
Lyman M. Law, sinking of the, 120,)j 

J,6 



Japan, 142 

Jellaladeen, Persian poet, 32 

Jugo-Slavs, 03 

Kaiser, the: 

Autocratic authority of, 49 
Extracts from speeches of, 66 

Kerensky government driven out, 94 

Kings, divine right of, 180, SO 

"Kultur," 174, 80 

Lafayette, Marquis de la, 52, 158 

I-amb, Charles, 190 

Lane, Franklin K., Why We Are at 

War, 156-162, 79; biography, 79 
Lansing, Robert, 155, 83 
Laws, international, 109 



"Made in Germany," 184 

Magna Charta, 98 

Mahomet, 158, 160 

Massachusetts, state of, 22, 36, 31 

Material resources, mobilization of, 
131 

Maxmilian, chancellor, resigns, 105 

Meaning of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, The, 63-74, 40 

Mediterranean, Germany's submar- 
ine policy concerning, 126 

Mercier, Cardinal, 158 

Message of Washington, The, 
49-58, 38 

Message to Congress, 113-118 

Mexico: 

Attitude of U. S. to, 250 



Index 



121 



Disorders in, fomented by Ger- 
many, 51, 103 

Insults U. S. flag, 101 

Loss of lives of foreigners in, 69 

Loss of property of foreigners in, 69 
Mexico and Japan, 142, 160, 179 
Michaelis, Chancellor, 63, 70 
Middle Europe, the projected, 74, T5 
Military masters of Germany: 

See their mistake, 147 

War begun by, 144 
[Mines, laying of in neutral waters, 

156 
Misprision of treason, penalty for, 55 
Mob spirit, 191 
Mobilization of material resources, 

131 
Monroe Doctrine: 

Germany's feelings concerning, 176 

Imperilled by Germany, 177, 178, 78 

Meaning of, 111, 170, 95 

Note on, 43 

President Wilson urges support of, 
103 

Supported by British fleet, 170, 175 
Monroe, James, President, 111 
Montesquieu, 26, 32 

National workshops, 26, 32 
Navagero, Bernardo, 25 
Naval program, Germany's, 117 
Navy, United States, equipment of, 

131 
Neutrality : 

A negative word, 84 

Armed, 122. 129 

Character of, 114 

No longer feasible in United States, 
133 

Violated by Germany, 178 
Neutral nation, rights as, 121 
New Jersey, woman suffrage in, 88 
New Zealand, 158 
"Nicky" and "Willy," czar and 

kaiser, 63 
Nippold, Professor, remarks on 

jingoism in Germany, 67, 68 

I 



Non-combatants, rights of, 125 

Oath of Allegiance: 
Meaning of, 75 
Qiioted, 169 

Objectives of America, 194 

Organization of material re- 
sources, 131 

Ottoman Empire, 221 

Our Responsibilities as a Nation, 59-62 

Paine, Thomas, 33 
Palermo, 120 

Panama canal, the, 176, 40 
Pan-American agreement, 254 
Pan-Germans, 186, 187, 68, 70 
Papen, von, 51, 57 
Parker, Theodore, 32, SO, 34 
Peace, as outlined by Germany, 
' 146, 148 
Peace drives, 249 
Peoples' war, 241 
Persia, German schemes, 232 
Persia, sinking of the, 179 
Peter the Great, 51 
Piave, failure of Austrian offensive 

at, 93 
"Place in the sun," Germany's, 

176, 67 
Plato, 20, 31 
Plots, German, 58, 71 
Poison gas, 161 
Poland, restitution of, 108, 152, 221, 

225 
Polish language, use of forbidden 

by Germany, 76 
Pope Benedict XV, 151 
Portugal, acquisition of colonies, 175 
Potsdam, 2 
Powers of the world, America's 

relations with, 60 
Priestly, Joseph, 30, 33 
Principle, American, 84 
Program ot the World's Peace, 

209-218 
Proudhon, 26, 32 
Prussia. 

Constitution of, 48 



122 



Democracy Today 



Voters divided into three classes, 62 
Prussian autocracy, ]35, 145, 173, 

176, 193, 2 
Prussian- Poland, 76 
Public moneys, appropriations of, 206 
Punitive damages, not desired by 

United States, 154 

Red Cross ships sunk by Germany, 

159 
Reichstag: 

How chosen, 61 

Powers of, 49 

Resolutions of the, 211, 222, 223 

Social democrats in, 68 
Request for a Grant of Power, 119- 

125 
Rights of man, 27, 34, 63, 64, 68, 73, 

124, 129, 137, 180 
Rights of nations, 137 
Rintelin von, conspirator, 57, 10.2 
Romanoff dynasty, 51 
Roosevelt, Theodore: 

Biography of, 39 

Our Responsibilities as a Nation, 
59-62 
Root, Elihu, The Duties of the Citi- 
zen, 163-181; biography, 80 
Roumania, German acts in, 231, 97 
Runnymede, 236, 98 
Russia: 

America's friendship for, 253 

Autocracy in, 135 

Black Sea, ports of, bombarded, 77 

Democracy in, 135 

German acts in, 231 

Scarborough, attacks on, 156 
Scheidemann, criticizes government, 

94 
School of Citizenship, The, 90-95, 41 
"Scrap of paper," 160 
Second War Message, 194-20S 
Sedition, 142 

Self Determination of people, 223 
Serajevo, 50, 72 



Serbia: 

Austria's demands on, 144, 73 

Invasion by Austria, 171 
Service, universal liability to, 131 
Severance of diplomatic relations 

between United States and Ger- 
many, 116 
Sherbrooke, Lord, 44, 37 
Socialism, meaning of, 46 
Socialists, in Germany, 148, 61 
Spain, acquisition of colonies, 175 
Spanish succession, war of, 50 
Statue of Liberty, meaning of, 83 
Status of belligerent accepted by 

United States, 130 
Status quo ante bellum, 151, 152 
Stephana, sinking of the, 55 
Submarine warfare: 

Austria-Hungary endorses Ger- 
many's policy, 137 

Germany's policy, 113, 121, 126, 
128, 160, 161 
Subsidies, 71 
Supreme War Council at Versailles, 

258, 104 
Supply and demand, law of, 205 
Sussex, sinking of the, 113, 159, 179, 

44, 54, 55, 79 

Tarnowski, Count, 137 
Taxation, special, 131 
Terrorization, Germany's system of, 

161 
Thane of Cawdor, 29 
Tirpitz, von, 50 
Treason, defined, 55 
Treaty obligations, 71 
Turco-German fleet, the, 77 
Turk, dark rule of the, 8 
Turkey : 

Armies drilled by Germany, 146, 70 

Visited by German emperor, 70 
Turkish statesmen take their orders 

from Berlin, 146 
Ukraine, German acts in, 231 
United States: 

Armed forces of, addition to, 131 



Index 



123 



• Constitution of, 9-28 

Driven to state of war, 130 
Gives help to Allies, 132 
Purposes in war, 107 
Reasons for entering war, 229 

Universal liability to service, 131 

Universal suffrage, 41 

Unwritten constitution, 44 

Vera Cruz, occupied by U. S. troops, 

101 
Venezuelan dispute, 176, 81 
"Verboten," 157 
Versailles, Supreme War Council at, 

258 
Vienna, Congress of, 222 
Vigilancia, sinking of the, 4^ 
Vimy Ridge, battle of, 106 
Villa, unlawful acts of, 101 

War: 

Begun by military masters of Ger- 
many, l44 

For conquest, 133 

Zone prescribed by Germany, 116 
War message, 126-140, 44 
Washington, George: 

Founder of the republic, 62, 48 

Speech on, 49-58 
Welland Canal, destruction of, 

plotted, 57 
Why We Are at War, 156-162 
William II, fall of, 105 
Wilson, Woodrow, biography, 39 
Wilson, Woodrow, addresses: 

America First, 81-89 

American of Foreign Birth, The, 
75-80 



Attitude of the U. S. toward 

Mexico, 250-256 
End of Selfish Dominion, The, 

229-235 
End of War, The, 257-261 
Flag Day Address, 141-150 
Meaning of the Declaration of 

Independence, The, 63-74 
Message to Congress, 113-118; 

219-228 
Mount Vernon Address, The, 235- 

239 
Peace with Justice, 240-249 
Program of the World's Peace, 

209-218 
Reply to the Pope, 151-155 
Request for a Grant of Power, 119- 

125 
School of Citizenship, The, 90-101 
Second War Message, 194-208 
War Message, 126-140 
What Democracy Means, 182-193 
World League for Peace, 102-112 
Wonian suffrage in New Jersey, 88, 

41 
World League for Peace, A, 102-112 

4i 
World to be made safe for democracy, 
137 

Young Turk movement, 71 

Zabern incident, the historic, 75 
Zimmermann, Alfred, supervises Hin- 

du plot, 72 
Zimmermann note, the, 160, 52, 80 
Zola, M., 24, 31 
Zone, naval war, 44 

War, prescribed by Germany, 116 



SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL 

(Prepared by George L. Marsh, author of Manual j ur the Studi 
of English Classics) 

hjJlps to study 

■] 
(Eoman page numbers refer to the body of the text; italic^c 
page numbers to the Appendix.) 

The Editor's Introduction '' 

What has been the natural effect of our extremely, mixed pop- 
ulation on the lack of a * ' consciousness of any fixed, national 
purpose ... in the minds and hearts of Americans" 
(p. 7)? Why is a ''common, ordered intention" (p. 8) to be 
desired for a nation? Do you think it can be obtained in a na- 
tion that has been called, very aptly, a "melting pot"? Had 
the ' ' melting pot ' ' character of the country any serious effect 
on its participation in the late war? 

What is the essential difference between d-emocracy and repub- 
licanism (p. 8) ? Note the confusion that has come about 1 
through the association of these words with specific politicalai 
partiesi Have they, as names of parties, any real meaning init 
harmony with their etymology? 

What is the historical position of the United States amonglj 
republics (p. 9) ? Among democracies? What essentially < 
democratic ideas and institutions did we get from Greattt 
Britain? Consider the question whether our government or thai 
British government is in actual practice the more democratic. 

What is the essential difference between democracy and autoc- 
racy (p. 11) ? Collect in the speeches of President Wilson (and 
others if you can) material which amplifies or makes more clear 
this distinction. Is any autocratic authority now left in the 
world? Answer as specifically as possible. 

124 



APPENDIX 125 

What arguments are sometimes made against democracy 
(p, 13) ? Consider these carefully and answer them system- 
atically on the basis of material found throughout the book, 
and wherever else you can find material. 

j Why is it desirable to deal in schools with the ideals of 
democracy (p. 14) ? 

Lincoln 's Gettysburg Address 

What was the historical setting for this speech (p. S9) 1 
What quotation from, or allusion to, the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence does it contain? What portions of this speech have 
been most quoted? Eead the last sentence aloud with the 
proper emphasis (p. S9), 

In what characteristics — or, more specifically, what words, 
phrases, etc. — do you find this speech notably poetic? Why do 
^"ou suppose it is so short? Can you imagine any way in which 
|lt might have been improved by expansion? 
i| Other important speeches by Lincoln may be found in the 
[Lake Classics edition of Washington, Webster, and Lincoln. 

Lowell on Democracy 

What was the occasion of this speech? How old was Lowell 

hen he delivered it (p. 56^) ? What public services had he ren- 
iered? For a general estimate of Lowell's importance in litera- 
ture see Newcomer's American Literature; for selections from 
ILowell, see Newcomer and Andrews, Three Centuries of Ameri- 
\7an Poetry and Prose. 

\ Find the specific portions of this address that justify the 
jditor's statement (p. 15) that it ''shows us still on the defen- 
uve ' ' as to democracy. Is there at any point a confession of 
jveakness in Lowell's defensive attitude; or is it in part due to 
the nature of his audience — to his desire to be ingratiating, 
sonciliatory ? 

Why does Lowell make his apology about time and tell his 
jtory of Agassiz (p. 21) ? Note the distinction he makes between 
'wisest" and ''most prudent" (p. 21). 

What were the conditions of suffrage in our early days-f 



126 APPENDIX i 

Where, and why, were there bad effects from universal suffrage <3 
(p. 23)? j 

In relation to the latter part of the paragraph ending on 
page 23, compare the attitude of the Russian peasants very 
recently, after the land was divided among them on the theory 
that it should be administered according to socialistic principles. 
As soon as they became land-owners they ceased to be socialists; 
they refused to do with the land otherwise than as private 
owners 1 

For the passage from Burke alluded to on page 24 (p. 31 
also), see the new Lake Classics edition (1919) of speeches by 
Burke. 

Why was democracy not popular in France '(pp. 24, 31)1 \ 
Was the French government less democratic in 1884 than now? 

What was the nature of the British trouble with the Boers ^ 
(pp. 25, S^) ? How long after this address did the Boer war 
occur? What was the attitude of the Boers in the recent war? 
Note the prominence of a Boer general in British councils. 

What was Lowell 's purpose in the historical allusions on - 
page 26 (see p. 32)^ What applicability today has the last 
sentence of the paragraph ending on that page? 

What famous associations has the phrase ' ' the rights of man ' 
(p. S3) ? 

The phrase "a deed without a name" (p. 29) is used by thd 
Weird Sisters in answer to a question by Macbeth (Act IVl 
Scene 1) as to what they are doing. See the Lake edition oJo 
the play. 

Consider the present applicability of the last sentence on pagn 
29, both to labor unions in the United States and to the laboi 
party in Great Britain. 

Explain the distinction meant by Theodore Parker ( 
Note how the speeches of President Wilson, farther along 
book, are characterized by the idealism emphasized on pa^ 

Make a systematic summary of Lowell's answers to 
ments against democracy. Do they seem to you adequat 
can you supplement them in any way? 

What are the objections to compromises (p. 35)? Note tx. 
way in which the Peace Treaty prepared at Paris in 1919, am 



APPENDIX 127 

he Constitution of the League of Nations, illustrate these ob- 
jections. 

i Does the story on page 36 cast any real light on the ''Irish 
[question " ? 

What important prophecy is to be found on page 371 
I Explain fully the sentence introducing the poetical quotation 
3n page 38. Does this imply that all governments are more or 
less bad? Is it an argument ior anarchy? 

Explain the allusions at the top of page 43. How and why 
did the person first mentioned gain so much power? What sort 
of use did he make of it? Can similar comment now be applied 
to any other American? Why and to what extent? 

Does the comment at the bottom of page 44 apply with much 
force to the American constitution? Study the amendments 
^pp. 23-28 — another may now be added) and consider to what 
extent they involve ' ' tinkering. ' ' Are they very numerous 
considering the number of years since the constitution was 
idopted, the increase in the population of the country, the gen- 
eral progress of the world? 

What was Henry George's plan of taxation (pp. 46, 38) "1 
vVhat do you take to be Lowell's view of it? 

On the whole what do you think of Lowell's speech? Was it 
idapted to his audience? Too conservative or cautious? Does 
t require very much modification on account of the events of 
hirty-five years? Note the witty turns of expression; the 
lappy allusions; the figures of speech. What impression does 
t give you of Lowell's ability as a diplomat? 

Cleveland on "The Message of Washington" 

'^ this whole speech compare Webster's speech on Wash- 

n the Lake Classics volume of selections from Washing- 

bbster, and Lincoln. See also Washington's Farewell 

'ij'ss in the same volume. 

■ '^^.sider whether "harmony, honesty, industry, and frugal- 

^^ (p. 52) are any more or less practiced in this country now 

^ at the time Cleveland spoke. Has the Great War had any 

%:ect in this matter? Have all our people been affected in the 

^me way! 



228 APPENDIX 

Explain the distinctiou between ''the land we live in" and 
''the land that lives in us" (p. 57). 

Study the style of this speech. Do you notice any difference 
as to length of words, formality of sentence structure, direct- 
ness and idiomatic simplicity, between this speech and the|j 
speeches of President Wilson. 

EOOSEVELT ON " OUR EeSPONSIBILITIES AS A NATION " 

What changes would now have to be made in some parts of 
this speech (e. g., p. 59) ? What problems mentioned or implied^ 
in it still exist? Sum up its main ideas in a few sentences. 
• Do you detect any important differences in style or manner 
between this speech and the preceding one by Cleveland, or the 
speeches of President Wilson? 

Speeches by President Wilson— Before This Country 1 

Entered the War 
"The Meaning of the Declaration of Independence "—Ho\\ 
long had Mr. Wilson been President at the time of this address 1 
How long was it before war was declared in Europe"? Had the 
event which primarily caused the war happened? What is the 
main point made as to the nature of the Declaration of Inde 
pendenee (pp. 63-4) ? Note the extremely direct and specific 
nature of this speech; before the end of the second page a "bib 
of particulars" is commenced. Contrast it in this regard witli 
the preceding speeches by Cleveland and Koosevelt. What viev 
of the Mexican trouble is here expressed? Compare the speed 
given nearly four years later on the Mexican problem (pp. 25( 
ff.). What is the distinction made in the last sentence of th. 
first paragraph on page 71 f 

"The American of Foreign Birth"— What was the situation 
of the war at the time of this speech? Is it aUuded to? D' 
you find that the material and the way of presenting it ar 
made especially appropriate to the class of persons addressed 
(Nearly all of Mr. Wilson's speeches may profitably be exan 
ined on this point.) What do you think was meant by tl 
expression "too proud to fight"? Was the way in which th^ 
expression was taken up and made fun of, justified? 



APPENDIX 129 

"America First'' — What important '* peculiarity of patriot- 
ism in America" is emphasized (p. 81)? How was this prac- 
tically demonstrated after this country entered the war? Make 
a list of specific ways. What seems to have been the President 's 
attitude in relation^to the war at this time (p, 41)1 Did the 
foreign-born citizens of the country justify the faith in them 
expressed in this sj^eech? If you think they did, specify how 
and to what extent. 

*'The School of Citizenship" — What changes had occurred, 
between the time of this speech and the preceding one, in rela- 
tion to Americans of foreign birth (pp. 94, 57 ff.) ? 

' ' Abraham Lincoln ' ' — In what ways is this speech for a very 
definite occasion brought into relation with the general prin- 
ciples of democracy? Do you get any new light on Lincoln! 
Amplify the distinction made at the bottom of page 98. In 
what sense are men like Washington and Lincoln not really 
"typical Americans" (p. 99)? In what sense can they be 
called typical? 

' ' A World League for Peace ' ' — How soon after this address 
did the United States break diplomatic relations with Ger- 
many? How soon was war declared? In what ways and for 
what reasons is it evident that the war has come closer to the 
United States than the preceding speeches indicated? Note 
the primary reason for a ^'concert of power" (p. 103); find 
places in the following speeches where this point is reiterated 
on every occasion. Trace through this speech elements of prepa- 
ration for the constitution of the League of Nations as finally 
formulated in 1919. Is the peace formulated in Paris in 1919 
a ''peace without victory" (p. 106) ? What document is quoted 
(without quotation marks) near the bottom of page 107? How 
is the point that is made near the top of page 109 applied in 
certain practical details of the peace treaty as formulated in 
Paris? 

"Message to Congress ... on Severing Diplomatic Re- 
lations" — Note differences in character between this speech and 
most of the others by Mr. Wilson in this volume, due to the fact 
that this is in the mam a simple statement of fact and quotation 
from documents. Mr. Wilson has ordinarily delivered his 



130 APPENDIX 

speeches to Congress in person, whereas the President's mes- 
sages previously were generally sent over and read by the read- 
ing clerk. 

** Bequest for a Grant of Power" — How much change in the 
situation has come about between the time of this speech and' 
the preceding one? It is important through the whole series toi 
trace the development of events and the consequent changes in' 
action. 

''War Message" — What violations of international law are 
recited? List them all, with use of the notes (pp. 44 ff.). Why 
was the ''armed neutrality" suggested- in the preceding mes-^ 
sage impracticable (p. 129) ? Is it effective to have the series 
of sentences (pp. 130, 131) beginning, "It will involve," etc.l 
Note the way in which a distinction is made between the Ger- 
man people and their government (p, 133). Have you found 
this earlier in Mr. Wilson's speeches? Trace it in his later 
messages and speeches, and note that in fact the German people 
'were ultimately set against the rulers who had driven them into 
war. How do the comments on Eussia apply to later conditions 
in that country (p. 135) ? Pick out in this important message 
the most significant phrases as to war aims that have been re- 
peated or varied only slightly throughout the President 's utter- 
ances; make lists of repetitions or variations of each expression 
of the sort, noting how consistent a line of policy has been fol- 
lowed. In the formulation of the peace treaty, has this country 
lived up to the statement of purposes in the first complete para- 
graph on page 137? Have other couiitries shown an attitude in 
any respect similar? What turned out to be the facts, in gen- 
eral, as to Americans of German birth (p. 139) ? See an expla- 
nation as to the laws of treason on page 55 ff., in the Appendix. 

Speeches by President Wilson — After This Country 
Entered the War 

' ' Flag Day Address ' ' — How long after the declaration of war 
was this speech delivered? How much preparation for active 
participation had been made by this time? How soon did the 
first draft registration take place? Were there American sol- 
diers in France yet? Study carefully (pp. 57-60) the series of 

J 



APPENDIX 131 

I events that are rapidly summed up on page l'i2-3. Note the real 
nature of the German government as explained on pages 60-63 
(Appendix). Sum up the Pan-German aims and the plans for 
Middle-Europe (pp. 144-46, 63 f£.). What remarkably accurate 
prophecy did Mr. Wilson make in this speech (p. 147) ? 

''Eeply to the Pope" — Just what does restoration of the 
*' status quo ante bellum" mean (p. 151) ? Sum up the Presi- 
dent's objections to such a peace. 

''What Democracy Means" — What reasons for the success 
of German industry before the war were unfair from an eco- 
nomic point of view (p. 8S) ? How far was Germany seemingly 
successful at the time this speech was made (pp. 185-7) ? 
What attitude toward labor is shown in this speech? What 
warning as to certain kinds of labor organizations is given ? Is 
the speech well adapted to its audience ? What do you think of 
the paragraphing on page 190? 

''Second War Message" — What progress in preparation had 
the country made by the time of this message? What does tlie 
President stress as of primary importance (p. 194) ? What 
does he have to say to those who call for peace? What sort of 
peace does he favor (p. 197) ? Discuss the extent to which the 
peace terms announced from Paris in May, 1919, harmonize with 
this formula. How do you account for variations — or apparent 
variations, if you regard them as such? Study the paragraph 
occupying most of page 196 and try to account for its power 
and effectiveness. What do you consider to be the purpose of 
the last paragraph on page 199 ? Where, in this speech, is there 
preparation for harsh treatment of Germans after the war ? 
In what way does President Wilson think the Eussian situation 
might have been better handled (p. 202) ? 

' ' Program of the World 's Peace ' ' — What moves in the direc- 
tion of peace prompted this address (pp. 209-11) ? Note that 
among the conditions of the armistice of November 11, 1918, 
the Germans were required to give up their fraudulent treaty of 
Brest-Litovsk and the later, equally unfair peace with Eoumania. 
What was the substance of the resolutions of the reichstag of 
July 9, 1917 (pp. 94-5) ? How far was the President's wish as 
to the *' processes of peace" (p. 213) fulfilled? Note that the 



132 APPENDIX 

maintaiuing of a censorship on news, in order to prevent inter 
national misunderstandings during discussion, is not the same 
thing as having secret understandings between nations. A 
careful study of the famous ''fourteen points" (pp. 214-17), 
in comparison with the terms of the treaty of peace as finally 
formulated, is both interesting and important. Newspapers at 
the time of the announcing of the terms of the treaty generally 
gave the impression of a much greater divergence from the 
* * fourteen points ' ' than a close study shows. Allowances must 
be made for the inevitable compromises involved in satisfying 
so many different countries with equal voice in the proceedings. 

* ' Address to Congress ' ' — What was the occasion for this 
speech? Sum up the criticisms of Count von Hertling's reply 
to the ' ' fourteen points. ' ' What relations do the four ' ' prin- 
ciples" stated on pages 226-7 bear to the ''fourteen points"? 
Study, in the way suggested above, the extent to which these 
principles were followed in the formulation of the peace terms. 
How, specifically, do these principles apply to the case of Fiume 
and Dalmatia? The case of the Shantung peninsula? 

^ ' The End of Selfish Dominion ' ' — What was the status of the 
war at the time of this speech? Note, throughout, the effective 
reiteration of phrases which the President had already used 
more than once as to our war aims, our .wishes as to peace, etc. 

' ' The Mount Vernon Address ' ' — What noteworthy change in 
the trend of the war had occurred by this time? Observe the 
effectiveness of the introduction; the suitability of the speech 
to the place and the occasion; its tone of calm faith in the ulti- 
mate prevalence of the right. "What striking sustained figure of 
speech is there (p. 237) ? Study the relation of the four num- 
bered paragraphs on page 238 to the previously announced 
"fourteen points" and to the terms of the actual peace treaty. 
How soon was the prophecy in the middle of the last paragraph 
realized? 

' ' Peace with Justice ' ' — Yv^'hat results were gained in all the 
"liberty loan" campaigns? Study the relations of the series 
of questions on page 242 to Mr. Wilson 's other statements of 
war aims, conditions for peace, etc. What reasons are given for 
making the League of Nations a part of the arrangements for 



APPENDIX 133 

peace -(p. 244) ? What was the President's success in this mat- 
ter? How does he answer the criticism that this country is dis- 
regarding important advice in Washington's Farewell Address 
(p. 246)? Study the related portions of Washington's speech 
in the Lake Classics edition of selections from Washington, 
Webster, and Lincoln. What is the meaning of the term ''peace 
drives" (-p. 249)? How many such drives had there been up 
to this time? 

"Attitude of the United States Toward Mexico" — Compare 
the first selection from Mr. Wilson in this volume (i^p. 63-74). 
Sum up the relations of this country with Mexico during his 
administration (pp. 100-103). What is the point of the first 
sentence of the paragraph beginning near the bottom of page 
253? Note the emphasis on the League of Nations even in this 
speech. 

' ' The End of the War ' ' — Sum up rapidly the events of the 
last month or two before the date of this address, both military 
events and the negotiations looking toward peace (pp. 104-5). 
What do you take to be the main idea and purpose of this little 
I speech? 

Secretary Lane's ''Why We Are at War" 

This is valuable as an impassioned summing up of the whole 

case, 'to be supplemented by specific evidence in the various 

jspeeches of President Wilson and the notes on pages 41 ff. 

(Appendix). Why are there so many short paragraphs on 

pages 158-160? 

I Senator Eoot's "The Duties of the Citizen 

This cool, clear-cut statement of law should be compared with 
the Constitution of the United States (pp. 9-28). What is the 
big, imj)ortant truth stated for the benefit and instruction of 
people who opposed this country's entering the war? Is the 
repetition on page 166 useful, needed? What is the effect of the 
series of sentences beginning similarly on page 170? Wliat im- 
portant points as to the Monroe Doctrine does Mr. Root make 
(p. 176) ? What previous trouble had occurred with Germany 
as to this principle (pp. 81-2) ? 



134 APPENDIX ^ ; 

Speeches by Premier Lloyd George >! 

What evidences of adaptation to the particular audience do' 
you find in the speech on ' ' The Meaning of America 's Entrance 
into the War"? Is it true that the United States ** never en- 
gaged in war except for liberty" (p. 1) ? What is the essence 
of the characterization of Prussia (pp. iS, 3)"1 Note the strik- 
ing prophecy as to the Kaiser 's promise. What was the ground 
for, and the soundness of, the German view as to the entrance 
of the United States into the war (p. 5) ? How did America 
study the Allies' blunders (p. 6)1 Compare the latter part of 
this speech with Mr. Wilson 's ' * fourteen points ' ' and with 
the terms of the peace treaty. 

With the speech entitled ' ' Britain 's War Aims Newly De- 
fined" (pp. 107-116), compare especially Mr. Wilson's ''Pro- 
gram of the World's Peace" (j)p. 209-218), delivered three 
days later than Mr. Lloyd George 's utterance. Do you attach 
any special significance to the fact that the latter was given 
at a trade union conference? Look up the war papers of the 
British Labor Party, which are among the most enlightened 
documents of the period. Collect points of harmony (and of 
difference if you find important differences) between the aimsl 
expressed in this speech and in Mr. Wilson 's speeches. 

Constitution of the United States 

What was the purpose of the constitution? Under what sort! 
of government had the United States been operating between 
1776 and 1787? 

Work out the changes in each case in which a part of the 
original constitution v.as changed by amendment (pp. 9, 10, 15, 
16, 17). Sec. 3 (p. 10) is changed by the XVIIth amendment; 
the first sentence on page 15 by the XVIth amendment; the 
whole system of electing the President (pp. 16, 17) by the 
Xllth amendment. 

Why was the representation in the House of Eepresentatives 
fixed according to population, while all the states, regardless 
of size., have equal representation in the Senate? Does this 
operate fairly? 



APPENDIX 135 

Note portions of the constitution rendered obsolete by the 
abolition of slavery (pp. 14, iO). 

Explain the actual working of the election of the President 
under our party system, and show how it differs from the method 
intended by the Xllth amendment (pp. 25-6). 



THEME SUBJECTS 

1. Is there such a thing as typical Americanism (see pp. 7, 
70, 77-79, etc.) ? 

2. The difference between democracy and republicanism 
(p. 8). 

3. The significance of Gettysburg (pp. 17-18, 29-30). 

4. Lowell as a diplomat (pp. 19-48, 30). 

5. Summary of Lowell's arguments for democracy. 

6. ^* Harmony, honesty, industry, and frugality" (p. 58) in 
relation to the war. 

7. Application to problems of today of the principles out- 
lined in Eoosevelt's speech (pp. 59-62). 

8. Aj)plication of the Declaration of Independence to our 
life today. (Which, if any, of its principles seem obsolete? 
Which are of most importance?) 

9. President Wilson and Mexico (pp. 69, 250-56, 100-103). 

10. The American of foreign birth in the war (his duties, 
how he performed them, etc. — material to be collected from 
many places in the book; e. g., pp. 75 ff., 86, 94, etc.). 

11. A character study of Lincoln — using material on pages 
96-101, supplemented by other available information. 

12. A character sketch of President Wilson — on the basis, 
primarily, of his speeches in this volume. 

13. An argument for, or against, ^'a world league for 
peace" (pp. 102 ff.). 

14. A simple narrative of the events leading up to the war 
in Europe. (This may be gleaned largely from the notes in 
this volume.) 

15. The relations of this country with the war up to April, 
, 1917 (see the notes). 



136 APPENDIX 

16. Why America entered the war (pp. 156-62, supplemented 
by more specific details in Mr. Wilson's speeches and in the 
notes). 

17. Our war aims (a rapid summary of the most important 
points reiterated in many places). 

18. The German government before the war (pp. 48, 60-62, 
etc.). 

19. War preparations in the United States (taking account 
of such matters as the draft, the ' ' liberty loans, ' ' the organiza- 
tion of industry, the ship-building, etc., etc.). 

20. America's share in the final victory. 

21. A summary of Mr. Root's speech (pp. 163 ff.). 

22. Pan-German ideas of Middle-Europe (pp. 185-6, 64 ff., 
etc.), 

23. President Wilson's "fourteen points" (pp. 214-17) — 
explanation of them in the simplest possible terms; how they 
grew out of this war, etc. 

24. IIow the ''fourteen points" fared at the peace table. 

25. More specific discussion as to any one of the disputed 
or compromised questions ; e. g., the trouble between Italy and 
Jugo-Slavia, between Japan and China, the Poland-Danzig 
situation, the case of Russia, etc. 

26. Points of agreement and difference between Mr. Wilson 
and Mr. Lloyd George (pp. 1-8, 107-116, and Mr. Wilson's 
speeches) . 



APPENDIX 137 

SELECTIONS FOR CLASS EEADING 

1. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (pp. 17-18). 

2. What democracy is (pp. 31-34). 

3. Lowell's arguments for democracy (pp. 38-43). 

4. * ' Our Responsibilities as a Nation ' ' (pp. 59-62) . 

5. Liberty and patriotism (pp. 64-66, 70-72). 

6. "The American of Foreign Birth" (pp. 75-80). 

7. ''The School of Citizenship" (pp. 90-95). 

8. ''Abraham Lincoln" (pp. 96-101). 

9. Arguments for "a world league for peace" (pp. 104 
112). 

10. The occasion for the "War Message" (pp. 126-130). 

11. America's object in entering the war (pp. 133-140). 

12. "Flag Day Address" (pp. 141-150). 

13. "Why We Are at War" (pp. 156-62). 

14. The status of those opposed to war (pp. 163-69). 

15. Germany's crimes (pp. 172-181). 

16. America's first task in the war (pp. 194-8). 

17. President Wilson's "fourteen points" (pp. 213-18). 

18. "The Mount Vernon- Address " (pp. 235-39). 

19. What will be a just peace (pp. 241-49) ? 

20. The importance ©f America's entering the war (pp. 4-8). 

21. "Britain's War Aims Defined" (pp. 108-116). 



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